Someone I Looked Up To

[Jeremy Nelson]

I know I'm so late, but I was clearing out some boxes when I felt compelled to post this.

Yesterday, I traveled home to get all the rest of my useless crap out of my mom's house. She was moving, so I had no choice. I found a box with some old essays I wrote in junior high. I came across one essay I flunked where we had to talk about one of our heroes. I chose Merv Griffin.

You see, by this time, I had run out of options. I had already used up all of the heroes EVERYBODY uses- my parents, Martin Luther King, ...Martin Luther King, and my grandpa. I actually had to write about my unconventional hero. We were in the computer lab typing our rough drafts when my teacher decided to scan over what I had already typed. She didn't get past the first paragraph when she told me, "Merv Griffin is not a suitable hero". I thought, "who has the right to choose who and who isn't a suitable hero?"

I had to do this paper during Black History Month. Because we were given an essay during Black History Month, every student was forced into doing a paper on a black person. I am black, and I am proud and grateful for every accomplishment and contribution that black people have made to this world. Even at 12, however, I didn't feel compelled to write about black people just because it was our month. I wanted to write about somebody whose career path I wanted to follow. hopefully, one day, I would get to meet the man who created two of my favorite game shows.

After being threatened with failure if I turned in the Merv Griffin essay, I printed out a Martin Luther King essay I wrote the year before, just in case I chickened out at the last second. I didn't, and my teacher ended up reading about why Merv Griffin was my hero. She gave me an F because I didn't follow the assignment, and I had to take an F home to my very-strict mother. When she saw it, she said "I didn't think you were serious about going into television. You proved me wrong."

I failed an essay, my mother still grounded me for not listening, and I never got to meet Merv. I couldn't be happier. I'm doing well as a broadcast major, and am on my way towards a bright future...all because I truly did look up to the man.

How about you? Is there one person who always made you want to go into game shows/ your current career?

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'rollercoaster87\' post=\'165188\' date=\'Sep 30 2007, 10:21 PM\']
I failed an essay, my mother still grounded me for not listening[/quote]
That's a shame. I'm pretty sure that if I were in your shoes, my mom would tell me to hand in the Merv essay and if the teacher failed it, c'est la vie.

Sounds like you rose above it, though. Well done.

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'rollercoaster87\' post=\'165188\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 12:21 AM\']
"Merv Griffin is not a suitable hero". I thought, "who has the right to choose who and who isn't a suitable hero?" [/quote]
No one.  

I had to do this paper during Black History Month. Because we were given an essay during Black History Month, every student was forced into doing a paper on a black person.

I wonder how much hell there would be to pay if you told students they could only write an essay on a white person.
America's schools in action.

/I blame Bush
//Not that Bush
//Saints playing like crap this year.

[BrandonFG]

[quote name=\'rollercoaster87\' post=\'165188\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 01:21 AM\']
How about you? Is there one person who always made you want to go into game shows/ your current career?
[/quote]
I could say that I was just generally inspired by watching TV, and subconsciously being fascinated by the behind-the-screens action. I was big on reruns of stuff, and Nick@Nite and TBS both had blocks of shows from the 60s-80s...so did WWOR, when Cox Cable had it. Even at 8 or 9, I was into shows that no kid should know anything about, and had one of those TV encyclopedias, and I guess reading about the premises is what gave me ideas. It's funny because 15 years ago, it was an unhealthy obsession, and now I get paid to work in the field.

But, honest-to-goodness, I remember being about 5, and up watching a late-night rerun of either "The Streets of San Francisco" or "Barnaby Jones". At the beginning of the show, you'd get the kickass theme song, then the announcer would say the title and then "A Quinn Martin Production". My mom explained to me what that all meant, and I vaguely remember wanting to have an announcer introduce one of my TV shows like that.

So, thank you, Quinn Martin. :-)

/And to think I was an architecture major...
//Pfft

[JakeT]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'165189\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 12:53 AM\']
[quote name=\'rollercoaster87\' post=\'165188\' date=\'Sep 30 2007, 10:21 PM\']
I failed an essay, my mother still grounded me for not listening[/quote]
That's a shame. I'm pretty sure that if I were in your shoes, my mom would tell me to hand in the Merv essay and if the teacher failed it, c'est la vie.[/quote]

Same here...fortunately for me, I had a more open-minded teacher for senior English...I wrote my final senior term paper (a paper that counted for 50% of the complete year's final grade) on a subject considered inane by most people, that subject being "The Game Show Scandals", and received the 2nd highest grade in the class.  I still have that term paper to this very day.

Jake

[DrBear]

I dunno, I got an A in Minority Studies by doing a report on Indian nicknames in pro sports...

Your teacher was both right (you did have to write about a black person) and wrong (your hero is YOUR hero). Sadly, most of education today is "do what I tell you to do," not "do this to LEARN."

Of course, the whole thing could have been avoided had you chosen Adam Wade

[Jeremy Nelson]

[quote name=\'DrBear\' post=\'165201\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 05:43 AM\']
Of course, the whole thing could have been avoided had you chosen Adam Wade
[/quote]
If only I knew then...at the time, the only "Musical Chairs" I knew about was the game that 3 year olds and drunk college students played

/not together, of course.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'DrBear\' post=\'165201\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 06:43 AM\']Your teacher was both right (you did have to write about a black person) and wrong (your hero is YOUR hero). Sadly, most of education today is "do what I tell you to do," not "do this to LEARN."[/quote]
There's been a lot of unnecessary bashing of education in general in this thread.  If the assignment was to profile a black person, and you turn in a report about Merv Grifiin, then the teacher was right to fail you, especially since you were warned in advance.  That's just comically, blatantly defiant.  Part of education (please notice I said part) is accomplishing tasks as assigned within a time frame, which is after all what most of us are going to do all our lives.  I suspect that your teacher knew (as my teachers knew back then) of your fondness for game shows, and figured you therefore weren't going to learn much profiling someone you already knew well.  Mostly, though, I imagine it was the whole "not black" thing.

Having said that, I also see this as a pivotal, even transitional moment in your life where you (and your mom) recognized that television was your future.  I'd trade that for a bad grade in junior high any day.

/I'd have picked Hank Aaron.
//Because back then, I couldn't have found enough on Nipsey Russell.
///But I wouldn't have picked Bill Cullen.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'165213\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 08:44 AM\']
There's been a lot of unnecessary bashing of education in general in this thread. If the assignment was to profile a black person, and you turn in a report about Merv Grifiin, then the teacher was right to fail you, especially since you were warned in advance.
[/quote]
Point well taken. And I'd be interested in knowing the exact context. Because giving the assignment "Write a paper on your hero. Oh, your hero has to be black, because it's February" is just idiotic, whereas "In honor of Black History Month, write a paper on a black person you admire" is not. And you will agree that there are absolutely teachers out there who would assign that both ways.
[quote name=\'JakeT\' post=\'165200\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 03:29 AM\']
Same here...fortunately for me, I had a more open-minded teacher for senior English...I wrote my final senior term paper (a paper that counted for 50% of the complete year's final grade) on a subject considered inane by most people, that subject being "The Game Show Scandals", and received the 2nd highest grade in the class.  I still have that term paper to this very day.
[/quote]
Term papers I wrote in 9th grade English:
Mythology
Richard Ramirez, the "Night Stalker"

Term papers I wrote for my other English composition classes:
Software piracy
Video game history
Video game strategy

Barely pulled a C on the first two. A's on all of the others. My 9th grade English teacher was a raging biatch.

/and now I'm being paid to write, and well
//about video games, even
///suck it, Mrs. Walkup

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'165212\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 10:44 AM\']
/I'd have picked Hank Aaron.
//Because back then, I couldn't have found enough on Nipsey Russell.
///But I wouldn't have picked Bill Cullen.
[/quote]

Well, if you did Nipsey, I don't the teacher would've appreciated the bawdy stories about life on the "Chitlin Circuit" or extended excerpts from Nipsey's "party records."  

Which, of course, is why you wouldn't have done Redd Foxx.  

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'165213\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 11:47 AM\']
Point well taken. And I'd be interested in knowing the exact context. Because giving the assignment "Write a paper on your hero. Oh, your hero has to be black, because it's February" is just idiotic, whereas "In honor of Black History Month, write a paper on a black person you admire" is not. And you will agree that there are absolutely teachers out there who would assign that both ways.[/quote]
Agreed.  Moreover, there are teachers out there (I work with several) who wouldn't see the difference.  I'm also vaguely concerned, since rc87 mentioned he's black, that the unspoken part of the assignment was "write a profile of a black hero because you're black and your heroes should be too."  I definitely see the "hero" part of this as being problematic, but I was the whitest white boy running barefoot through the hills of East Tennessee you're likely to find, and I would have managed it.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'165216\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 09:03 AM\']
I'm also vaguely concerned, since rc87 mentioned he's black, that the unspoken part of the assignment was "write a profile of a black hero because you're black and your heroes should be too."[/quote]
Yeah, that possibility wasn't lost on me, either, but I didn't want to make that assumption without knowing more of the context. But I definitely thought about it.

I definitely see the "hero" part of this as being problematic,

That's my biggest sticking point, I think. "Hero" is not a word you should toss about lightly.

[mcsittel]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'165216\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 11:03 AM\']
 I definitely see the "hero" part of this as being problematic, but I was the whitest white boy running barefoot through the hills of East Tennessee you're likely to find, and I would have managed it.
[/quote]

You too?  Gosh, we must be related!  For that you've won $50 in "Hoosier Daddy" instant tickets!

You could have had my high school Spanish teacher, who said in class in 1986, and I quote:

"I don't know why this school's library subscribes to Ebony and Jet... there's only one black kid in this entire school, and I don't think he's smart enough to read either one of them."

Fortunately we had other teachers who shared with us writers of *all* colors.

[TLEberle]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'165212\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 08:44 AM\'][quote name=\'DrBear\' post=\'165201\' date=\'Oct 1 2007, 06:43 AM\']Your teacher was both right (you did have to write about a black person) and wrong (your hero is YOUR hero). Sadly, most of education today is "do what I tell you to do," not "do this to LEARN."[/quote]There's been a lot of unnecessary bashing of education in general in this thread.  [/quote] Except Ray has a great point, one I can back up. If you were to mentally replace the phrase "public school" with the phrase "government run school" every time you heard the former, opinions might be different. For nine of my twelve years of grade school, I marked time by doing things because I was told, and because a grade depended on them. I learned more between my seventh and ninth years than in the remaining nine.

(During one of those nine years, I was also assigned a "black person of note" paper, randomly drew Arthur Ashe from the bowl, and remember that he was a good tennis player and died from AIDS. And that's roughly it.)

If the assignment was to profile a black person, and you turn in a report about Merv Grifiin, then the teacher was right to fail you, especially since you were warned in advance.  That's just comically, blatantly defiant.  

That's true, there's no dispute on that account. But there's also a lesson there. People have choices to make, and for good or bad, those choices bring about consequences. Those consequences have to be dealt with.

Mostly, though, I imagine it was the whole "not black" thing.

Personally, I'm not crazy about Black History Month as something to recognize, any more than I would be to celebrate "Native American Month," or "White Guy Month." People should be celebrated and studied for their contribution to history, and not for the color of their skin. Going back to that bashing of schools thing, I stopped counting a while ago, but the Seattle School District has a pathological mania when dealing with race. Or rather, when trying to brainwash their students into thinking that equality is great, but being white is an unfair advantage. Or that a white person cannot by definition be a victim of racism.

The assignment would have been exponentially more valuable (and I imagine personally satisfying) if there was no limitation on the skin color of the honoree.

///But I wouldn't have picked Bill Cullen.

It's too bad that the internet didn't exist in this form when I was going to school, because as a youngster, all I knew about Bill was that he had a physical impairment, and that he hosted a game show or three that I liked. Given the chance, I would have loved the opportunity to craft a "hero worship" essay about him. Throughout much of my childhood, I thought of how Bill dealt with his challenge, and it helped me with mine.

/And yeah, there's that whole thing about how he was such a good host, too.