Entertainment

I watched a prime time game show for the first time in a long time. I used to love watching game shows. My favorites as a child growing up were Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, and The Price is Right. Later on, I discovered the old classic game shows from before I was born: Let's Make a Deal, Concentration, Password, and Match Game. Who knows which one Alex Trebek hosted before he hosted Jeopardy? 

This game show was sadly a long shot from these other game shows I've watched and enjoyed. Maybe you watched the very same show and even perhaps saw the very same episode I watched. The whole time as I watched, I just kept thinking to myself, this could be very bias, and nobody would ever know. 

It's hosted by two hosts. We'll call them Host 1 and Host 2. There are two teams of four players competing for money. Host 1 is with one team, Host 2 is with another. They play a series of games with the hosts to try to win a chance to play the final game for the lump sum. I saw many issues of why I would not ever want to be on this game show because there is so much room for bias. 

Game shows typically consist of two different factors: luck and knowledge. Let's Make a Deal is almost pure luck and mind games. Jeopardy is almost completely based on head knowledge/trivia (and reflexes). Shows like The Price is Right use a little bit of both, although the knowledge is heavily consumer knowledge and not any trivia. 

This particular game show had too much room for bias because each of the hosts participates in the games with the two teams and influences their score as well as how much money they earn. In the first game I watched, the host gave word clues to try and help the team member guess the secret word, much like Password. In the second game I watched, the host was guessing celebrities who were being described by the team member. That's a lot of trust to have in these two hosts to know they're not purposely taking longer to give an answer just to run the clock. Or when they impulsively give a response which may not have been the best clue to use. 

Why is the host playing such crucial roles in determining how successful these teams are in their scoring? 

Entertainment.

Game shows used to be about watching someone sit in a hot seat contemplating multiple choice questions for an excruciatingly long time to try and win a million dollars. Game shows used to be about watching someone spin the big wheel and hope they get lucky and land on the $1.00 space to go to the showcase showdown. Game shows used to be about watching someone guess a number from 1-3 and sigh in disappointment with them as their curtain revealed a real live billy goat. 

This game show has shifted the key interest to the hosts themselves rather than the contestants because they are the ones with the crucial roles in each of the games. I purposely have not mentioned any specific names of the hosts or the game show itself to leave out any influencer bias. But there's a chance you may have figured it out on your own. 

The majority of people watching don't even know it. Unless you're someone like me who has thought these things through in the process I did, you didn't even notice. Because you simply saw that this show was hosted by Host 1 and Host 2, and nothing else mattered.

And that's exactly what they wanted.

Canonized

 It had been bothering me for 10 years on and off. It was the last paper I wrote for his class in college. We were told to choose a piece of literature we thought worthy of being in the literary canon. Being a flustered college junior at the time anxiously awaiting to finish the last of her classes in order to get into full-time student teaching and graduate early, I picked a novel I was already reading, wasn't terrible, and fit the requirements so I thought: Jane Eyre. 

Now, Jane Eyre is not a terrible book by any means. I'm sure there are many fans of this novel who would have written a fabulous essay on why it should be a part of the literary canon. Unfortunately, that person was not me, and the essay I wrote was only slightly convincing of its canonical merit. It was my lowest scoring essay of his class for the semester, and I always remembered. 

This professor and I stayed in touch minimally over the years. We may have corresponded 2-3 times since I graduated. It took 10 years for me to have the courage to send him an email, and not only to tell him I wish I had written my essay on another book, but also which book I should have written it on.

Why was I so scared all these years? The book I wanted to choose, and still choose today, pales in difficulty to Jane Eyre. As an English major and graduating senior, choosing a book of importance to be canonized means a high-level, scholarly book, right? That's what I thought, and it took me all these years to finally come to terms with the fact that I thought wrong, and it was perfectly all right.

The book I should have chosen was a book I'd first read as an elementary school student. I read it again in 7th grade as required reading in English class that year. I read it again a few years later. And I read it again this summer. Each time I've read it, I've pulled away different philosophies, lessons, and themes. All of them have been there all along, but it took different life stages and different versions of who I was as a person to see them. 

I should have picked Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. I've thought about rewriting that paper just to feel like I was being true to myself, but let's be honest. Nobody has any use for me to be writing a literary essay anymore. So instead, I'll share about it here.

1. Walk Two Moons is accessible to people of all ages and abilities. It could be for a challenge for an advanced 4th grader, which is about the time I discovered it. It could be just right for an on-level or below average 8th grader, or a refreshing, simple read for an adult. The protagonist is 13-years-old, so obviously it was written to appeal to the young adult audience of approximately middle school age. But as I mentioned before, I read it many times, and it still spoke to me each time.

2. The book is unpredictable. There are cliffhangers left at the end of multiple chapters, and the ending is not what you expect it to be. When reading it for the first time, it hooks you in a way that you want to keep going. The way it's all woven together is quite ingenious really. The first time I read the book, it took three days. The second time I read it, I finished it in one. And I am not a fast reader.

3. The book provides multiple perspectives depending on the reader's age and experience. Reading it at different periods of life allows the reader to relate to different characters. A middle schooler would relate to Phoebe or Salamanca whereas an adult reader would relate to Mrs. Winterbottom or Mr. Hiddle. 

If you know me, you'll know I relate very personally to Salamanca. That's one of the biggest reasons why I've always loved this book because it made me feel like there was someone out there, albeit fiction, who understand and experienced exactly what I was going through. But the older I've gotten, I've come to realize the true importance of where this book earns its title. And how little people take the time to walk two moons...in someone else's moccasins.