Point #7: Weather Hot Enough For You?

Back in season 24 (1999), I turned 23 and moved away from home for the first time. My first job living on my own was as an adoption associate for the local animal shelter, where I acquired most of the skills I use now as a freelance writer, such as getting the hottest scoops.




One day, I had to help clean the shelter at 4 AM, even though it opened at 10 AM. Why? The Channel 7 Eyewitness News Van was coming to cover the month-long adoptathon.



We cleared up all the wet newspaper shreddings from the cat cages that fell on the floor and moved an open plastic puppy playpen to the center of the cat room around the corner from the URI pets. The smug weatherman came in with his crew, which gave everybody umbrellas with his creased red face on it. The whole staff and Mr. Umbrella stood around the puppy playpen. All of us were on live television, laughing as a Rotweiller-mix puppy bit the weatherman's finger.
Surely, this episode slipped your mind. I even forgot about it for three years. Then, it dawned on me while I was writing this blog - Channel 7 was the New York affiliate for ABC.
I can now say with precision that for at least one minute, ABC had broadcast an image of me on live television. Three years after I first suspected that my whole life is on television, a fraction of my life is on ABC.
At this point, I still wasn't convinced that my life was on television. But if it was, it definitely was on ABC.

Note: Today, the paper I work for (Long Island Paper) had a cover teaser on how Extreme Home Makeover made a Long Island family happy. Also, pulling out of the Borders parking lot, I saw an Eyewitness News van parked there for no apparent reason.



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