Where I came from, peroxide blondes drive gun-racked pickup trucks and prayer kicks off sporting events. Desperate to escape my Southernness, I latched on to the big city’s street noise and skyscrapers. I tried stomping out my drawl, but occasionally let it slip, like when I asked for the “tahhmm” instead of the time. I purchased an unflattering zip-up sleeping bag coat to protect me from my first frigid winter.This weather seemed, to me, the great equalizer—everyone regressed to snottynosed kid state, all red-cheeked and breathless by the time we crossed the subway platform, up and out, to our places of employment.
Headed to my first day as an NBC intern, I was nervous and dizzied with the desire to succeed. My predilection for bright colors clashed with commuters in head-totoe black, a sleek look I’d never seen before.
Here, I learned the question “What do you do?” often preceded an introduction. Interns ate lunch where the people with real jobs ate, in the low-ceilinged commissary, all stark angles and mismatched flat chairs. We rotated phone-answering duties and swapped stories about whose day was crazier. Bono sent Katie Couric a giant cactus for her birthday that I had to pick up and walk to her corner office. Another time, when I worked on a segment with her, she told us to scrap the shot that made her ass look big. One day there was a buzz around the office.We all got the email:“Weeklong reality TV series, The Apprentice with interns, on Today.
Taped auditions tomorrow.” I signed up. My screen test was over in five minutes. When I learned that I was one of the eight chosen, I began secretly fantasizing about winning the competition and hosting my own TV show. We were divided into two teams, Rockefeller and Peacock. For a week, our tasks were taped in the afternoons to air the following mornings. Each day, a member of the losing team would be fired live on the show. Day 1: I sat still for hair and makeup.The bespectacled wardrobe woman collected our outfits to be ironed and steamed. We were introduced to the audience and assigned a series of office tasks; sort the mail, find compelling Democratic convention footage and get Latin music for a series to be taped in Miami—all in 30 minutes. My team raced to alphabetize, locate Howard Dean’s soon-to-be famous scream, and groove to maraca-tinged Gloria Estefan.We won, and a member of the other team was fired.
Day 2: Each group compiled a research packet for the upcoming Oscars. Both packets were unimpressive, but my team eeked out a victory. They fired the oldest intern, Robin, whose bossiness alienated everyone.
I was proud to fill in friends from home who called to hear what was going on behind the scenes, and flattered when a stranger recognized me in a hamburger bar. Day 3: The assignment was to shoot, write, edit and voice a 30-second story to air the following morning on Today. We trailed the Zamboni driver on the Rockefeller ice skating rink with our camera crew. After the taping, I went upstairs to finish my real intern responsibilities. My colleagues, bosses, and fellow interns cheered me on. Day 4: I wanted to win. Badly.They showed each team’s story live on the show and then went to commercial break. Ours was funny and clever but flawed. Matt Lauer said it was incorrect to use the brand name Zamboni, we should’ve called it an “ice-resurfacing machine.”When the time came to fire someone, Donald Trump walked out. He was a giant of a man, and I was surprised how authentic his hair looked up close.
He grilled each one of us, but we wouldn’t lay blame. Lauer told him that since I was the only news intern in the bunch that it would have been my responsibility to fact-check. The Donald looked at me and pointed. I knew it was over. “Allison,” he boomed in that famous voice, “you’re fired.”
I hopped into a hired car and asked the driver to take me home—my last perk as a five-minute celebrity. I felt alone and exhausted.
A friend called while we were skirting through traffic. “You were great!” he said. “I got fired.” “But what a shot! You’ll be back.” “I’ll be back,” I said, believing us both. I’d never seen more people walk with a purpose than I did in New York City. Maybe we all move so fast, not with a clear destination in mind, but so that we can outrun our failure. I hit the pavement that day too. Instead of going inside when the car dropped me off, I walked those grimy streets that had fed my ambition, and I knew I wasn’t alone.
I traversed the length of the island where one day I had made it and the next I was just another pair of heels clicking down the street.
Allison Gaudet Yarrow is working on a memoir called Southern Fried Jewish Girl. She blogs at www.allisongaudetyarrow.blogspot.com
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