The Oprah Winfrey Show

The Oprah Winfrey Show

I’ve had the great fortune over the years to make “Oprah Wishes” come true for friends and family, using my connections to secure some of the hardest tickets in town. I’ve often been asked, “Well, don’t you want to go see Oprah too?” The truth is, while I certainly admire the conglomerate known as the Harpo Dynasty, my television habits gear more towards Grey’s Anatomy and Lost rather than “My Favorite Things.” But with 40 looming ahead, and the knowledge that Oprah isn’t taping forever, I did the unthinkable. I sent Oprah an e-mail a few weeks ago.

“Dear Oprah. You’re the coolest Daytime Diva that I have yet to meet. While I can’t promise you fame or fortune for tickets, since you were able to clearly achieve both of those without my help, I can only appeal to the sensible side of you and request a few spare tickets for a soon-to-be 40 year old living in the city of big-Oprah-shoulders. Any opportunity, for any show, would be greatly appreciated. Oh yeah, I’m also chronicling the last year of my 30s and I’m running out of material, here’s a link to my blog, perhaps the tickets will help me create at least another post.” And with a click of the mouse, I sent my pathetic, hardly sincere e-mail to the black hole of Harpo Studios, also known as the ‘Audience Reservation Department.’

Imagine my surprise when my cell phone rang with the ‘Unknown’ blocked number on my screen. I was with my girlfriends at lunch, “Oh, geez, blocked calls are usually only client calls. I’m skipping this one.” Yet something, likely one of Oprah’s Angel Network fairies sitting on my shoulder whispered, “Are you sure? What if it’s a good phone call?” and so I answered the phone. “Ms. Bermingham? This is the Oprah Winfrey Show. We received your request for tickets and we have set aside two tickets for tomorrow’s taping, can you make it?” “Umm, sure. Wow, you actually read my e-mail, it didn’t go into the spam trap? I’m shocked.” And with those words, I suddenly found myself the most popular girl at prom with the hard-to-get Oprah tickets.

One of the things I read about, and mentioned on the phone call, was to wear bright colors if you’re in the audience. Bright colors? Seriously? My entire wardrobe is built around a single color – BLACK. Hardly the choice of bright colors. I raced home from work certain that I must have saved one ‘bright color’ ensemble to wear to the show. “Dave, does navy blue count as a bright color?” “How about gray, that’s brighter than black, right?” “Wait, I have smoking red-hot boots, those are bright…of course, no one will see them unless I kick my feet up or get first row status.” With a desperate phone call to our neighbor Tracy for anything remotely bright, I pulled together a gray dress from my closet, with a borrowed red scarf that matched the smoking-red-hot boots. I was now Oprah bound.

Emily Haite and I arrived at Harpo at the pre-determined agreed upon time and found ourselves 39th in line. That, we figured was a good thing – 39, I was beginning to feel the Oprah love already. Clearly she understood that it was my 39th year, I was 39th in line, I’m beginning to feel the schwag coming and beginning to believe that maybe Oprah would do a mid-year “My Favorite Things.”

We were herded, like cattle, in to a waiting area with all forms of communication stripped from us except for our God given talents; after all, if Oprah could make billions talking, surely we could all endure a crowded room making friends without the benefit of our iPhones, Blackberries, or even something to write with. We were surrounded by a sea of bright colored, heavily made up individuals – I was beginning to think that my black wardrobe would have actually stood out better than my red-hot boots. Our ‘neighbors’ that sat patiently with us for hours on end flew in specifically to see Oprah from Seattle. “Seattle, really? Her show is shown outside of Chicago? Wow.” Others talked of trying for 10 years to get Oprah tickets. Another individual came from Africa for the show. And sheepishly, I had to admit that we lived down the street, sent an e-mail and voila, here we were. I was beginning to feel like an imposter in the tidal wave of Oprah Mania.

It appears that none of us actually knew what the show topic was. While I was thinking that “My Favorite Things” would have been cool, I began daydreaming of different topics that I would find interesting. “Moms who drive mini-vans and hate it.” “Are you too old to be on Facebook?” “Moms who have photos of Blagojevich. “ “Bloggers who have no audience.” And then I started dreaming of celebrities that I might enjoy seeing, “How about Clooney and the last episode of ER?” Even Dr. Oz seemed like a show that was worth my sudden departure from the office. And then, without too much warning, it was time to enter the studio.

For those of you that have been to the studio, you know that it’s rather small, intimate, and really there is no bad seat in the house. “How many are in your party?” There’s a party? Who-hoo. “Oh, just two of us.” And with that, they led us to the row of the brightest colored individuals that were in the audience. “Here, you can sit in our Caribbean, island-inspired row. These fine ladies’ outfits, and matching headgear, will ‘pop’ nicely against your drab gray.” All I could think of ‘Well, at least I’m not sitting behind these ladies, because surely I would not be able to see Oprah.”

After settling into our seats, Emily and I scanned the studio. “Those aren’t photos for this show are they?” “I don’t know I haven’t been to Oprah either.” All across the studio were photos from the Iraq war. Now, let me put this disclaimer in here, I’m very proud of our armed services and I don’t take it lightly that they secure our freedom each and every day. We owe them a debt of gratitude for literally putting their lives on the line so that peons like me can walk freely and even scam a ticket to the Oprah Show. But – in the world of topics that I wanted to hear about, war stories was not one of them. I have enough personal war stories to fill an encyclopedia, real-life war stories in Iraq are not on my Top 10 Things to do on a Wednesday afternoon. Clearly you could see the disappointment on my face. Emily said, “Su, don’t look so disappointed. Look positive. After all, isn’t that what Oprah talks about in the Secret?” To which I retorted, “Well, I’m secretly positively hoping they change those photos before Oprah gets out here.”

The audience wrangler came out and tried to whip up the audience in to a frenzy. “And where are you from? Come out here at let’s do the booty dance,” she called to someone in the middle row. “This is Mrs. Motion, from Wheaton, and we’re all going to the do the booty dance with her.!” Booty dance? Is there a broken booty version for people like me? Wheaton? Seriously, did she bring my ex-in-laws with her? I thought they had that invisible fence around Wheaton? And before you knew it, the wrangler announced, “And here’s the host of the show, Oprah Winfrey.”

As they were not shooting live, Oprah had an opportunity to interact a bit with the audience while they were trying to adjust her microphone. Oprah jokingly complained of ‘trying to follow her own advice in my magazine, but this whole weight loss thing is hard.’ For those of you that believe Oprah truly is larger than life, well, she is. And she was wearing black. I guess she didn’t get the internal ‘bright colored’ memo. Oprah then went on to talk about the day’s topic for the show, “Walter Reed Medical Center.” Seriously, Walter Reed? I’m going to spend the next hour listening to stories about soldiers rehabbing at Walter Reed? Ugh.

It’s likely a good thing that I never pursued a career in medicine. Rather, I just use the medical services provided to me and thank my lucky stars for good insurance. Talking about surgeries and injuries are totally fine if they’ve happened to me. However, if they have happened to someone else, my insides literally turn inside out, the nausea creeps over me like a bulimic, and I look for the easiest way to either escape or roll myself up in to the fetal position. For sixty minutes, we heard horror story after horror story about how each soldier lost their limbs, how long they had been in rehab. And while most of the audience was crying, I was trying very hard not to throw-up in my purse.

I decided the best strategy to not embarrass myself on the Oprah Winfrey show (who’s the girl who puked under the seats?) was to simply stop listening to the stories and focus on something else. And when you have the grand dame of daytime television sitting in front of you, it’s not hard to figure out what to focus on. “If Oprah makes $100 million dollars a year, which is roughly $275,000 a day, and she utters approximately 1,000 words per hour, does two shows a day, then each word is worth about $140 per word spoken. I wonder if ‘amputee’ counts more than $140 when combined with other words like it, the, a, etc. I wonder if I could calculate the cost per letter when Oprah talks.” And with that, I spent the rest of the time in total admiration of the fact that Oprah is truly a money machine. She opens her mouth, and money flies out.

The show ended with Oprah taking photos with the war guests. And simply because Oprah knew that none of us had cameras of any sort with us, she reached up, and yes – grabbed her own boob and gave it a squeeze. If each word was worth $140, then this historic action in front of a studio audience was worth at least a $1,000,000. That would be the $1,000,000 photo if only I had a secret camera on my bright red borrowed scarf. But alas, her action could only be seared on my brain and perhaps that was Oprah’s way of saying, “Hey, sorry I didn’t give you keys to a car, or frankly any parting gift, not even a prosthetic limb on a key chain, I’m giving you instead a visual that you can take home with you.” And that my friends, is the story of my day with Oprah.