My Experience

by Steven H Silver

On Wednesday morning, the first thing I was asked when I walked into the office was if I had a copy of the show. Since I live about five minutes from the office, I was dispatched home to pick it up. At 11:30, the Tuesday show was run in one of the conference rooms for the benefit of those who had been in a meeting on Tuesday when we watched the show. It was a smaller group, but the dynamics were similar.

Things worked similarly when the second day's show aired, with the addition of popcorn for the viewing. The opinions on the second day were similar to the opinions on the first. The crowd liked Mary, but, perhaps this is an urban or a Northern bias, they ridiculed Allen based on his appearance and his accent. Even his impressive demonstration of intelligence was not enough to overcome the initial reaction.

When the Final Jeopardy question was revealed, the crowd went wild. People on the opposite side of the building heard the noise and came down to find out what had happened, working from the assumption that I had won a second day.

I left the office to pick up my daughter at day care and meet my wife for a celebratory dinner. It was our eighth wedding anniversary and my second Jeopardy! win. We went to Lovell's an expensive wine bar in Park Forest which is owned by the son of former astronaut James Lovell, Jr. The food was fantastic, but Robin wanted to look around the restaurant rather than sit still. Actually, Elaine and I wanted to look around, too, but we figured we would wait until we had finished eating.

When we returned from celebrating our anniversary, the answering machine informed us that there was only 3 minutes and 10 seconds of unrecorded time. One of them was from my former boss who had been informed that I was on the show. He wanted to know if he could get a tape of it to show at his next staff meeting.

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