I Wanted To Be a Millionaire, PART 2

(Image courtesy Sony Pictures Television)

This is the second in a two-part series on the author's experience as a contestant on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.

After a lengthy wait in the green rooms at the Bally’s Las Vegas studio for Who Wants To Be A Millilonaire, it was finally time for Midori to take the stage with me in tow.

I, being the “Plus One” lifeline, was escorted to my seat behind Midori. (The “Plus One” is one of three “lifelines” that the contestant can call upon in a pinch).

Before shooting began there was an opportunity to banter with the studio crew and the host, Chris Harrison. This was my chance to get in some publicity for Catalina and I told Chris and the audience about life on the island, the buffalo population, the newspaper column I was writing at the time and so on.

Then we got down to business. The countdown began, lights started to whirl and flash and the cameras started to roll to the thunderous, cued applause from the audience.

As is par for the course, the questions started off easy enough. The first question was “Which statement about the many statues of historical figures in Central Park is currently true?” There followed the four possible answers:  They are all made of chocolate, they are all looking at their phones, they’re all men or they’re all nude except for socks.

The only reasonable answer, of course, was that they’re all men.

The next one was fairly easy, too. “As contact with your doctor could trigger a reaction, MayoClinic.org says to be sure to tell them before an exam if you’re allergic to what?” The possible answers? White coats, Latex, scary-sounding words or health insurance fraud. Latex it is. Easy enough.

But then disaster nearly struck on only the third question: “Founded in 1961, which of these is a popular Swedish manufacturer of baby items.”

The answer may have been obvious to some, but the fact that Midori is not a parent complicated things. The possible answers were Newborn Nadia, BabyBjorn, ToddlerTorsten and InfantIngrid. Not being a parent myself, I was lost as well and hoped desperately that she didn’t call me up for that question.

Although she didn’t call me up, she did use two of her three lifelines on this one question:  the “Fifty-Fifty” (where two of the incorrect answers are eliminated) and the “Ask the Audience” lifeline. Evidently, there were a lot of mothers in the audience as the “BabyBjorn” answer got upwards of 95 percent. She answered thusly and we moved on, but at the cost of two-thirds of her lifelines. I was the last lifeline in her toolkit. Gulp.

There followed a few more surprisingly difficult questions. But Midori plowed through them, from a question about the definition of “Sesqihoral” to the oft-misheard lyrics to Manfred Mann’s 1970s hit “Blinded by the Light.”

Before we knew it, she was up to the $20,000 question where she got stumped again.

And that’s when I was called up.

The question was, “Only one of the following can weigh less than a nickel. Which is it?” The possible answers were a standard DVD, the average ruby-throated hummingbird, the average human tongue or a standard McDonald’s ketchup packet.

I remember trying to mentally weigh a DVD in one hand and a nickel in the other. I remember the word “can” throwing me for a loop. “Can” can mean a lot of things.

While I could safely rule out the human tongue, I wondered about the other three answers. How much “can” a ketchup packet weigh? How much “can” a DVD weigh? How much “can” a hummingbird weigh? Hell, how much can a nickel weigh?

I decided to fall back on our battle plan (“If we’re not absolutely sure what the answer is, let's just take the money and run.”)

But Midori was having none of that. She wanted to answer the question. She wanted that $20,000.

We debated the possible answers back and forth of few times before Midori decided on the ketchup package.

She was wrong. The hummingbird was the correct answer. We were done. We dropped down to the next lower threshold of $5,000 in winnings.

Off the stage we went, back out into the casino with the common folk.

Overall, we couldn’t complain too much about the outcome. It was a great experience and I was committing a rare act: leaving Las Vegas with more money than I came with. Or was I?

All in all, this is how my finances shook out:  My cut from Midori was 20% of the $5,000. After her taxes that she would take out of my cut, that amounted to about $900. But Midori had paid for the hotel rooms and most of the meals, so I only ended up spending a grand total of $872 on the three-day trip, including gambling.

In other words, Jim Watson went on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and broke even.