I didn't actually resemble Joan Collins during my volunteer stint at the senior high Whiz Quiz Invitational tournament. Okay, I admit I looked like a cross between Julia Child and Roseanne. My quiz show fantasy had major holes in its hot air balloon.
I had imagined myself reading the million dollar question, or at least those Helping-Mankind-While-Twirling-My-Baton questions for sequined beauty contestants. Everyone was relieved that the bathing suit competition was dropped.
No, I didn't get to be Alex Trebek at the tournament, which is a VGT. For some matches I was the judge, which meant I ran a back-up score sheet, timed six seconds for teams to hit the buzzer after the question was read, dreaded handling any protests to a question (which thankfully didn't happen), reminded everyone to turn off their cell phones, drank bottled water, and listened to interesting questions. I was supposed to be aware of situations where teams didn't have their captains give their official answer, and where team members did not wait for the question reader to recognize them before they blurted their answer. I wasn't very good at that, but we had an experienced reader, thank heavens. For other matches I got to be the timekeeper/scorekeeper. For those I set a sixty-second timer for the speed round, and did the official scoring. I got a box lunch from Jason's Deli, plus bagels from Dunkin Donuts (not as good as Einstein Bros.). I observed smart kids having fun and being polite, and heard some very funny questions. It was less stressful than judging at speech tournaments.
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