It's Not Me, It's You: Subjective Recollections From a Terminally Optomistic, Chronically Sarcastic and Occasionally Inebriated Woman (2 page)

M
y first car was a banana yellow Mazda GLC. Clearly it was not my first choice. It had already logged about 95,000 miles when I snagged it for the low, low price of one thousand dollars, which I financed at over twenty percent interest since I had worse credit than most homeless people.
“But hey, I’d have this bad boy all paid off within three years!”
I thought smugly. I acquired the car out of necessity when I lost all family car privileges.

Close to the day I turned seventeen, having obtained a learner’s permit months before and
almost
mastering the three-point turn, I took the road test and much to everyone’s surprise, most especially my own, got my driver’s license. Three months later, I promptly totaled my parents’ thirdhand gold Toyota Corolla—although I’m thinking the good people at Toyota called it gold because it sounded more palatable than bile, which would actually be a more accurate description of
the color. So, in retrospect, I probably did them a favor. And not just because of the color but because the car had seen better days—most of which were before I was born. In fact, most of my parents’ used cars had the life span of a goldfish. One day the car would be making a strange rattling noise and the next day it would be tires up, only to be replaced by another one just like it with even more miles. Many of my most vivid childhood memories are of being stranded on the side of the road due to a broken water pump, leaky engine gasket, or some other terminal car malady, enduring pitying looks from people driving by in cars manufactured in a more recent decade.

There were four of us girls in the car the night of the crash, coming home from a keg party, singing loudly along to Grandmaster Flash’s “White Lines,” when I pulled out of an intersection and out of nowhere—or at least out of the direction I wasn’t looking—a van smashed into us. The Corolla spun around a few times and came to rest on top of a median. The van kept right on going. Obviously the driver had been drinking even more than we had and had no interest in sticking around and coming face-to-face with anyone in possession of a Breathalyzer test. I kind of understood, but maybe a quick, “Yo, anyone dead back there?” or “Sorry to hit and run!” would’ve taken the sting out a little.

Sitting on the curb with my friends who were all unscathed but shaken, I contemplated the real harm that would come to me when my parents found out.

As soon as I was dropped off at home by my friend Beth’s
parents sans Corolla (which had to be towed to the nearest junkyard), I told my parents what happened. Shockingly, they reacted like they were in some kind of black-and-white sitcom where the parents were polite and slept in separate twin beds.

“Oh, honey, thank goodness you’re okay!” my mom said, throwing her arms around me in a startlingly uncharacteristic manner. I was momentarily taken aback.

“But, the car—it’s…it’s totaled,” I sobbed, waiting for a weighty object to be hurled in my direction. My mother had been known to throw things in anger and unfortunately she was in the midst of a “pressure-canning her own preserves” phase so she had ready access to those heavy glass jars—which, trust me, are pretty scary coming at you like a fastball pitch from across the room.

At the very
least
I imagined I would get a lecture on how irresponsible I was, how they knew this would happen, how I would have to pay them back for the damage. How none of this would’ve happened if I’d gotten my goddamn bangs cut so they wouldn’t be hanging in my eyes.

“As long as no one was hurt. Cars can be replaced; people can’t.”
Yeah, sure, Mom
. I’d seen
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. This pod person wasn’t fooling me. I braced myself for the punishment I knew would come. It took a week.

Following a fairly minor infraction, where I missed my curfew by about five minutes, my mother flew into a rage. “If you’re not responsible enough to get home at the time I’ve designated for you, then you are not responsible enough to drive
the family car—ever again.” To the outside eye, this would seem like an overreaction—I’d seen it coming a mile away.

“How am I going to get around? Go to work?”

“I guess you’ll have to buy your own car.”

Enter the only car I could afford: the banana yellow Mazda.

A year later, I slapped a “gas, grass, or ass: no one rides for free” sticker on its bumper and took off to make a new life for myself in Los Angeles. I could smell the freedom of the open road—I could also
see
it due to a gaping hole in the driver’s side floor of the car, where it had rusted clean through. The GLC’s health was declining quickly. Besides the rust holes, the engine sounded louder than a leaf blower; it puffed out huge clouds of white smoke when it started up, and the poor thing could only go 45 mph on the freeway, much to the aggravation of other drivers. Although I don’t see why they needed to honk and give me the finger. Did they think I
wanted
to drive that slowly in the fast lane?

By the time I got settled in my new home and realized the mandatory amount of driving a person does in a place like LA, I started to worry. The cross-country trip had taken its toll and the GLC was on its last spark plug. I couldn’t even take it on the freeway anymore, seeing as it wouldn’t go fast enough to merge and in LA people didn’t just give you the finger, they pulled out heavy artillery. I needed a new car desperately.

The little transportation available wasn’t an option. I certainly wouldn’t be caught dead taking the bus. That was for
poor people—not women like me who had over two hundred dollars between her checking and savings accounts. But, by this point, I had even worse credit than ever. I hadn’t paid a bill since I’d moved, including a credit card my mom had cosigned for me, which I quickly ran up to the tune of two grand. Turns out these credit card companies don’t care what your financial situation is; they want a payment
every
month, and I was under a constant barrage of calls from collection agencies. Because caller ID had yet to be invented, I was often forced to pick up the phone and say hello, only to hear a telltale pause and then an unfamiliar voice mispronounce my name.

“May I please speak to Stefanie Willer?” That would be my cue to fake my voice like I was suddenly an elderly Hispanic woman.

“Uh…
hola
?” I’d say, trying to sound like I’d also just been roused from a sound sleep at two in the afternoon to add to the confusion.

“I’m looking for Stefanie Widler? Wil-dair?”

“Ooo…
no habla ingles
.”

That would usually hold them off for a good hour. But then they’d call again. I wondered if this approach from bill collectors actually worked on anyone. Did they think they could simply annoy you into making a payment? If I didn’t have money on Tuesday afternoon, there was a
very
strong possibility I wouldn’t be rolling in piles of hundreds by Wednesday morning. Also, the mere fact that I’m
home
on a Tuesday afternoon should be a tip-off that I’m
not working
—and therefore have no money.

As a last resort, I called my mother to see if there was a slim chance she could help me out. I knew she wouldn’t cosign a car loan seeing as how she was still a bit miffed about the “credit card incident,” which she’d ended up paying off so I didn’t ruin her credit as well. I had to ask for the money straight-out. I explained how bad I needed a car so that I could get to work to earn money for necessities, like groceries, and possibly a few luxuries, like going to the dentist. Otherwise, I’d be forced to do something drastic, like…go to college.

She told me that she’d think about it.

A week later, she came up with the following plan: I would work and save up a decent amount of money, a few thousand dollars maybe, and she would match whatever funds I raised so that I could buy myself a car, which would seem like a very sensible solution—provided I wasn’t looking to purchase a car in
this century.
I couldn’t understand her logic. Did she think I was moonlighting as Donald Trump? I was working a part-time minimum-wage job, barely surviving on Top Ramen and bologna sandwiches. By the time I had saved up enough money to buy
half
a car, I wouldn’t need one because our society would most likely be using jet packs to buzz around the sky as their sole means of personal transportation. I needed a car
now
. I tried to reiterate this to my mother, but all I remember from her response was “blah blah, time to learn responsibility, blah blah, cars aren’t free…blah.” Obviously, this plan was not going to work.

My mother had to be wrong. Hell, I lived in Los
Angeles—land of opportunity! And that’s when it hit me. It was so obvious it may as well have been tattooed on my face: Go on a game show. It was so brilliant, I almost laughed out loud. Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner? From my youngest days I’ve had a borderline obsessive love of game shows. It was just a matter of picking which one. This was a stressful decision. It was one thing to lie on my couch eating dry salami and saltines, screaming “dumbass” at the lady in the Christmas tree sweater vest on
The Price Is Right
who couldn’t decide if two bars of Dove soap cost more than a box of Rice-A-Roni, but quite another to be on national television doing it yourself. Whatever show I chose would have to be easy.
Wheel of Fortune
was definitely out. As much as I liked watching the show, I was usually the very last person on the planet to figure out the puzzle. The board could literally be missing the A from “Jack and Jill” and I’d be completely stumped. Surely I would’ve eaten up any winnings I made from solving the puzzle just buying vowels alone. Had to rule out
Family Feud;
could not risk the off-chance they might randomly drug test, a huge red flag for key team members.

After a few more days of research done from the comfort of my bed, I hit upon a perfect show:
Hollywood Squares
. It fit all my criteria. Big prizes? Check. Almost indiscernible skill level required? Check. Basic understanding of tic-tac-toe strategy? Uh, check. From the looks of things, all I had to do was agree or disagree with the celebrities’ answers to random questions; the possible looking like an asshole factor was up to them. New car, here I come!

Seated on bleachers in an ice-cold studio with about sixty other
Squares
hopefuls, I felt slightly less confident. We were supposed to stand, say our name, and tell one interesting fact about ourselves. From the way everyone was overly enthusiastically whooping it up, being a game show contestant required a lot of undignified clapping and jumping up and down as well as a lack of sanity. One guy with psycho eyes, a huge mustache, and cowboy attire popped up out of turn and yelled so loudly you would’ve thought the entire group of us was hearing impaired.

“My name’s Robert, but my friends call me Crazy Red. I collect Barbie dolls and I’m a proud poppa to ten children! I just know I’m perfect for your show!” In my mind, the only thing Crazy Red seemed perfect for was a vasectomy—but the casting director was practically salivating. I didn’t feel good about my chances. The only thing I could think of to say about myself was that I had an unnatural love affair with chimps and I’d always wanted to keep one as a pet. So no one was more shocked than I was when the call came in a week later that I was picked for the show.

That’s how I found myself in a holding room backstage with a handful of other chosen people waiting for a competing contestant to be knocked out or win a car, giving one of us a chance to get out there. In the meantime, we were being run through tic-tac-toe strategy drills like new recruits in game show boot camp.

“Lisa, if George goes to the left upper corner with his X, and the middle is already taken, what should be your next
move?” barked Tom, the nineteen-year-old tyrant in charge of our group, which, naturally, included Big Red.

“Um, I’ll take Jim J. Bullock?” Lisa said, growing unsure of herself. It was understandable. We’d been coming to the studio all day for three days straight waiting for our chance to get on the show. Three eight-hour days with nothing to eat but old triangles of American cheese sandwiches, lukewarm honeydew melon slices, and a pot of burnt Folgers coffee was starting to take its toll.

“You can’t just say, ‘I’ll take Jim J. Bullock.’ You need to say, ‘I’ll take Jim J. Bullock to
block
!’” Duh.

“Okay, you’re gonna need to bring your energy
way
up!” Tom scolded us. I bet this type of pep talk worked like a charm in the bedroom. Personally, I thought my energy
was
way up, considering I normally have less energy than a house-plant. I felt I should be given props for even attempting to feign interest in a roomful of future scrapbookers. The whole situation was getting irritating to me because I didn’t need their boot camp. I was ready for battle. While these yahoos had been home beefing up their tic-tac-toe game, I’d been watching the show every night preparing for Operation Win a New Car. Like a spy studying the enemy, I’d learned that Joan Rivers, the center square at the time, was always right. It wasn’t clear if the producers slipped her the correct answers or if she was just some sort of game show savant, and it really didn’t matter—disagree with Joan at your own peril. The rest was even simpler: With any multiple choice question, the least obvious answer was always right; true/false questions, no
matter how ridiculous they sounded, were always true. “True or false: In Virginia it’s illegal to take a nap with a camel?” Absolutely true. I have no idea why the writers at the time never mixed it up more, but I thank them for it.

When it was finally my turn at the podium, I was ready. Too bad I hadn’t put as much thought into my style choice. True, it was the eighties, but it would have been helpful if someone had sent me a letter from the future warning me that wearing huge shoulder pads would prove to be a regrettable idea. So since I will never let anyone watch the VHS tape of the show, people just have to trust me when I tell them that I kicked game show ass like some sort of
Hollywood Squares
ninja. Sticking to my training, I sailed through the first round, taking the game and five hundred dollars barely breaking a sweat. I felt unstoppable, adrenaline flowing like blood through my veins—I could practically smell my new leather interior—until, suddenly, without warning, Super Dave Osborne tried to screw me.