D
ec. 30, 2016: I’m watching
the Michigan football team
play in the Orange Bowl
when Head Coach Jim Harbaugh
starts wildly clapping, clipboard in
hand. I turn to my dad and shout,
“Jim Harbaugh claps like a seal!”
Then I take to Twitter and retweet
everyone saying the same thing.
I had been accepted into the
University of Michigan about a week
before, but this was the first real
bond I felt with my future school.
See, Harbaugh and I have something
in common: We both made fools of
ourselves by clapping incorrectly on
national TV.
J
uly 4, 2011: I’m sitting on
my couch, family gathered
around,
watching
myself
on “Jeopardy!” Being on the kids’
version of the quiz show was a dream
that had materialized out of nowhere,
one I thought would never happen.
And yet, here I was, watching my TV
debut.
On TV, I hit a Daily Double and
began clapping, as is customary on
the show. But instead of clapping like
my competitors, like a normal person,
I held my hands perfectly straight and
parallel to each other and clapped,
well, like a seal.
I put my head in my hands, unable
to watch.
The first thing no one tells you
about being on a quiz show: Watching
yourself on TV isn’t fun. It’s a
cringefest made infinitely worse once
you realize millions of people are
watching it.
I was self-conscious about the way
I clapped from then on. Hey, at least
Harbaugh is good company.
My
second-place
finish
netted
$2,000 and 15 new friends (the other
contestants from my tape day — they
tape a whole week of shows in one
session). Not bad for a day’s work. But
after that, I came to the realization
that maybe I would never do anything
that cool again. I was washed up at
the age of 12.
Still, I had been on a quiz show, and
that itself was something I could use
to my advantage — or so I thought. A
year after my show aired, I moved to
Michigan where I would start eighth
grade not knowing anyone. Everyone
already had their friends, so I needed
a way to stand out.
By my second week, the entire grade
might as well have known. I got the
attention I wanted, but there would
be
unintended
consequences.
By
making my “Jeopardy!” appearance
the first thing anyone knew about
me, I was basing my identity around
it — an identity I would later realize I
didn’t want.
The second thing no one tells you
about being on a quiz show: You’re
quizzed
about
your
experience.
Constantly.
“How did you get on the show?”
(Online test, in-person audition, lots
of luck.)
“What’s Alex Trebek like?” (We
barely interacted with him, but nice
I guess.)
“Is your episode online?” (No,
thank god.)
And of course, “Did you win?” (The
conversation usually ended when I
said no.)
The third thing no one tells you
about being on a quiz show: There
comes a point when the show becomes
your identity, and at that point it
almost becomes out of your control.
There were no words I dreaded
more from a teacher than, “We’re
playing
Review
‘Jeopardy!’
this
week.”
Review
“Jeopardy”!
was
usually
a
PowerPoint
with
“Jeopardy!”-style questions where
teams competed for extra credit
right before a test. Every time, all my
classmates — some of whom I barely
knew — raced to be on a team with
me, convinced I would lead them to
victory and the ever-important extra
credit points, never mind that Review
“Jeopardy!” requires very different
skills from actual “Jeopardy!”. A win
was meaningless because of how I
had been used. A loss meant I had let
everyone down.
Being introduced to people often
followed a script: “Hi, this is Aria,
and she was on
‘Jeopardy!’”
It
was cool, until
my appearance
got further and
further in the
rearview mirror
and I was dying
to be known for
something else.
Anything else.
T
oward the
end of my
freshman
year
of high school,
I
discovered
Twitter.
It
wasn’t
long
before
my
curiosity
got
the
better
of
me and I looked
up tweets from
the day of my
“Jeopardy!”
appearance.
I
had to see what
people had said.
“What the hell they got this
little girl dressed in?” one tweet
said. “Looking like a freeze-dried
strawberry?”
“Aria looks like Gilbert Gottfried,”
read another.
And then, sure enough: “This little
girl Aria on ‘Jeopardy!’ claps like a
seal.”
They were supposed to be insults,
that much I knew. But here I was,
years removed from my 15 minutes
of fame, and all I could do was laugh.
The mean tweets were ridiculous and
overblown, but I could see a kernel
of truth in them, and that was all the
ammunition I needed to reclaim my
identity.
I did something I hadn’t been able
to for years: rewatch my episode. I
found the exact moment that spawned
the “claps like a seal” tweet. I made
it into a Vine, which I subsequently
posted on Twitter. It was my pinned
tweet for almost two years.
The Vine was a joke, yes. But I didn’t
make it to own the haters, at least not
really. I made it because it finally
gave me control over the narrative. If
I was going to be washed up, at least I
could make fun of myself for it.
O
nce I got to college, I realized
that people didn’t have to
know about “Jeopardy!” ––
so I didn’t tell them. In Introduction
to Psychology we played Review
“Jeopardy!”. My team was a random
group of people who sat near me. We
didn’t win and they didn’t care. It was
refreshing.
When people did find out I had
been on “Jeopardy!”, it was usually
because they’d gone to my Twitter
and seen the Vine. We’d laugh about
it together, but the pressure was
gone, because I was no longer “that
girl who was on ‘Jeopardy!’”
Instead, I was Aria: Amateur sports
writer, Twitter addict, U-M student.
“Jeopardy!” was a thing I had done,
but as it faded further and further
into the past, it became less and less
a part of who I was. Maybe getting
bylines in a student newspaper isn’t
quite as cool as being on a quiz show,
but it’s close.
It took a surprisingly long time for
me to unpin the tweet about clapping
like a seal, because it had become
as much a part of me as my original
appearance on the show. But it was
the moment I realized I didn’t need it
anymore — that I didn’t have to dwell
on the past to find something I was
proud of — that I started to feel like
maybe I hadn’t peaked after all.
Nowadays,
my
pinned
tweet
isn’t about “Jeopardy!” It’s about
my favorite stories I wrote while
covering softball for The Daily.
Of course, I haven’t left my quiz
show days totally behind. It’s still
in my Twitter bio, and sometimes,
people still find out, and they ask me
about it, the same gamut of questions
I’ve gotten for seven years now. But
it’s different.
“Wait, you were on ‘Jeopardy!’?”
they say. “Did you win?”
“Nope,” I say.
Then I smile and change the
subject.
Wednesday, September 5, 2018// The Statement
7B
I’ll take my identity for 800 dollars
BY ARIA GERSON, DAILY SPORTS WRITER
Courtesy of Aria Gerson