who's the fool

i was on tv a few years ago. i'd totally forgotten about this, but some morning show on a local channel in one of the east coast population centers had me on there promoting the company at the time. it came back to me when i was reading about a washed-up tv host and the lame people he had on his show. the big feature that day was apparently some type of back-to-school fashion show where they would have kids of all school-type ages parade around in their favorite clothes. maybe they were their parents' favorite clothes, but these were basically some seriously well-cared-for children whose attentive parents made a bit of a spectacle.

in the end, i decided the hosts were completely dense. i had some people with me; i'm pretty sure i didn't have the woman from our pr firm then, but she was within 10 years of my age and talked to me like an equal. this is nice when you're in your first job out of college. at the tv thing, i knew going in that i was supposed to be talking up our upcoming promotion and that there was a trivia question people could answer if they wanted to win something. no one from the show prepped me before i went on, but i'd done several radio appearances already. everything seemed totally fine until one of the hosts asked me the magic question. i answered it; what the heck else was i supposed to do? they were interviewing me and just threw that in with all the other stuff. i had no clue what else i should have done, and the woman apologized to me afterwards, saying it was too bad i hadn't known that was the prize-winning question. i had known; i just hadn't understood why they were asking me the question when the viewers were supposed to answer it.

when i thought about it today, i realized today that she must have expected me to launch into some kinda 'oh, well, i can't answer that but if any of you viewers care to find out, you can tell us and win a prize' type thing. i guess i'm the bigger idiot because i should have figured it out on the spot, but it would have taken so little preparation beforehand to get things straight. don't tv people go over anything with their guests before putting them on the air? still, now i feel like i could have been a bit less dim.