At an early age, it is possible to learn the price of life through The Price Is Right.
How many eight-year-olds know a can of chickpeas costs sixty-nine cents? How many twelve-year-olds can rattle off the features of a new solid oak armoir? And how many fourteen-year-olds can estimate the value of an ice-cream maker, new speedboat, set of maracas, and trip to Puerto Rico?
Well, I’ll you who, man: Any kid with the flu.
See, The Price Is Right is great when you’re sick because it comes along at 11:00am, which is about the time when your enthusiasm for missing school is sort of deflating into a boring day on the couch with a stomachache. By mid-morning, whoever is taking care of you has either headed upstairs or just put a blanket on you and gone grocery shopping. You feel too sick to do much of anything, so you just lay on the couch and flip channels endlessly, trying to understand why there’e nothing good on TV at ten in the morning.
Then finally — just as you finished counting the cracks in the ceiling, tried and failed to nap several times, and mindlessly gobbled down a pack of saltines — the clock strikes 11:00am and it’s time for the show.
That’s when the music starts kicking, the lights start flashing, and it’s time to come on down. Because it’s The Price Is Right, baby. So sing it with me and let’s get in the game. It’s just such a great time.
And, you know, I think it really helps that everybody on The Price Is Right is just so happy — people are running and jumping, laughing and screaming, and they’re all wearing homemade T-shirts to boot. Basically, they feel the exact opposite of how you feel and it’s sort of contagious.
Yes, The Price Is Right is just one massive climax of fun, prizes, games, and tuna fish ads. But you find yourself cheering along — guessing the price of the leather ottoman, yelling for the big wheel to stop on $1.00, and crossing your fingers for the announcer to unveil a game of Plinko or, yes … a new car!
And yeah, I know there’s a new host now, but come on — for how many years did The Price Is Right represent some solid, rock-like consistency in this mad, mad, mad, mad world? There was Rod Roddy’s sequined blazer, the wildly panning camera looking for the next contestant, Bob Barker’s skinny microphone, and shots of the family in the audience madly screaming advice to help our hapless contestant win that bedroom set.
It just never changed.
And so, whether you were six with the chickenpox, nine with the flu, twelve with a broken arm, or fifteen with menstrual cramps, you could count on sixty solid minutes with the company of that old seventies set, lots of one dollar bets, and advice to neuter your pet — all crunched into the best sick-day game show yet! And that’s a little something we like to call
AWESOME!
