It was as though every team in the line had already won. The audition numbers enlivened the crowd more than any amount of caffeine ever could. Standing tall with our bib numbers, Ellie reached for a pen to finally sign her life away to the Amazing Race via the intimidating all-encompassing waiver. I was still a little leery of this, so I held off until the last minute. As the line moved, amazingly ahead of schedule, we engaged in the “what if” game with the team behind us. What if you got on the show? Where do you most want to travel to? What if that team (pointing to one exiting the audition room) gets on the show? What if we get on the show???? This occupied me for the remainder of the wait, which was pleasantly not that long.
Number 47, that’s a good number. I like odd numbers. And it was great to be in the top 100 teams! By now the line had wound all the way around the casino. To guesstimate, I’d say over 1000 teams were now in line. We would walk by them all night as they continued to wait, long after our call had ended. Lindsay and I gave a “yes” or “no” to people we thought looked like their audition had gone well after they passed us on their way home. Finally we got into the next room, a waiting space where all us hopefuls sat and were called into one of four rooms with a different color Amazing Race sign on the door. Lindsay sat for minutes agonizing over which color was best to get called into, convinced that there was a secret system. I denied it, and think I am right. Two younger guys next to us started to talk to us. Several people, including myself, noticed that the Medium sticker was still on one of their shirts. Turns out he and his teammate had bought a full set of safari/trekking gear and were going to return it after the audition. Interesting. They asked why we should be on the race, then in return spewed oddly similar reasons for themselves. One major difference, however, was that they were dead set on the million, something Lindsay and I hadn’t much thought about. I was nervous by now, and Lindsay was trying to pump me up. That’s why we’re great friends; we balance each other.
“47!” The woman gestured us to the Green sign door. That was us! Here we go. The hours of discussing what we wanted to convey was behind us. “We can do this!” I thought. The cameraman, who opened the door for us, smiled widely and exclaimed, “Uh-oh, here comes trouble!” Who? Ellie and I? We bust out laughing. The most trouble Ellie and I could find ourselves in would be something like getting sucked into paying for an overpriced sandwich. Nonetheless, a positive way to enter the interview room - laughing! We shuffled into the room to find a table, a video camera that looked like the one I had at home, and a lady whose head was so deep in stray papers that she wouldn’t have noticed if Steven Spielberg himself had walked into the room (then again, I might not either; my pop culture knowledge is so bad). This set up was a lot different than we imagined!
A Sony home video camera on a tripod! This was it?! The big audition footage. I set down the bag, yes the one that was broken and being held like a small bear in my arms. I was glad we got this room. I had seen the cameraman several times that day. We stood on our tape line and said our names and team number. Then the guy said, “Why do you want to be on the Amazing Race? Go.” Boom! We were rolling. No timer, no interaction with the woman or cameraman. No indicators. No nothing. Lindsay took it away first, and I wrapped it up. 14 years of friendship, growing up together, leading very different lifestyles and having different interests, yet being united as friends through our faith and the longevity of our relationship. We covered most of what we had gone over together beforehand. I guessed when I thought it had been around a minute. “Okay,” the cameraman smiled. That was it. I leaned down and got the bag, and we headed out.
That was definitely the blurriest minute of our lives! We can barely tell people what we said, it went so fast. We strolled past, and past, and past, the line. Where did it end? We went up to our room, dumped our stuff, and went straight to the 50’s looking burger restaurant downstairs, where we laughed about how nearly every table was filled in 2’s, just like ours.
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