[img]396|left|Alex Campbell||no_popup[/img] Dateline Boston — I want to be famous. Oprah famous. That means I’m so famous Oprah invites me to be a guest on her show. I have three scenarios in which I could become famous on Oprah. One is for being a really good author, one is for surviving a shark attack and one is for saving a small child. Each scenario gets longer and more detailed.
Really Good Author Scenario
I’ve written a memoir of my life, and it’s really good. It’s becoming well known, but not top of the charts yet. Then Oprah reads it and she loves it and she has me on the show to talk about how much she loves it and how my life was really hard, yet I rose above it all. Then my book hits the bestseller list. And we become friends and we go to Maya Angelou’s house for a party and I get to meet Barack Obama.
Surviving a Shark Attack Scenario
I had seen this show on Animal Planet about this guy who survived a shark attack. What he did was, he bopped the shark on the nose and the shark swam away. A few weeks later, I’m at the beach. I don’t normally go to the beach; I actually hate the beach, but my friend says to me, “Well, you’ve never been to an island beach,” so we go to somewhere near Jamaica and the sand is white and the water is crystal clear turquoise, and it really is beautiful, and the water is warm, so I go for a little swim.
And then all of a sudden, in the shallow water, this shark comes out of nowhere and grabs hold of my leg. I get this flash in my mind of the Animal Planet show, and I don’t even think, I just bop the shark on the nose, with two hands making a big fist like this (visual of me making a big fist with two hands), and he lets go and swims away.
And so I stagger out of the water and I get medical attention, and I’m in the hospital, and it turns out the shark had bit my leg so bad I had to have it amputated at the knee.
And then Oprah interrupts me sort of and she says, “And I heard you said something really unbelievable when you came to, after the surgery.” And that’s a lead-in, so I say, “Yeah, I said, ‘Thank god it didn’t get my right leg!’” and Oprah tells me to show everyone my right leg, and I show everyone that that’s my tattooed leg, and I am so thankful that shark didn’t get that one, because the artwork cost over two thousand dollars. And everyone laughs, and Oprah can’t believe that’s what I’d be thinking about, but she admires my strength and she thinks the prosthetic leg I picked out is cool. It’s clear, with wires running all through it. I call it my bionic leg.
Saving a Small Child Scenario
So I’m in New York City, and I’m waiting for the subway. And there’s this Japanese family waiting for the subway, and they’re dressed nicely, and they look nervous, like they don’t really want to take the subway, but it’s a New York Experience, so they do.
Their attention is diverted for a minute, actually one second, and their two-year-old daughter toddles toward the track, and she falls down onto the track. And the mother is screaming, and without thinking, I just jump down there to get the child.
And just when I get down there, I see the lights of an oncoming subway. I have about two seconds to think, and I know I can’t make it up the side with the girl, there’s no time, and I’m not going to throw her, so what I do is I grab her and get down in between the tracks and lie as flat as I can, with the girl underneath me. I’m small, so I fit between the tracks. I just hope I’m flat enough that the train goes over me.
The train comes and screeches to a stop, but not in time, so it goes over me, about one car over. So the train is there, stopped, and I’m underneath it, with the girl, and I hope I’m not crushing her to death, and I hope she can breathe, and I hear a voice of authority asking me if I’m all right. I say I’m all right, and the voice asks me if I can crawl forward. I find it’s actually easier than I thought, and I crawl forward with the girl, and we get out, and I’m scratched up pretty bad, but she’s okay, just dirty, and we go to the hospital and get checked out and everything’s okay. And then the lead-in to the commercial is that I later find out just whose daughter I rescued. “We’ll be right back,” says Oprah.
And when we come back we talk about what a coincidence it was that I rescued a Japanese girl, because I had lived in Japan for a year, teaching English, and so I knew what soothing words to say to the girl in Japanese to make her feel okay. And then in the hospital I find out whose daughter I saved.
Turns out it’s the daughter of a famous Japanese princess. And so I really get the royal treatment (pun intended) for saving this girl. And I always have a place to stay in Japan.
Oprah’s talk show won’t be around for much longer, so it’s doubtful that I’ll get a chance to be on her show for anything, much less the scenarios I’ve just described. That doesn’t mean her show won’t go on in my head. Maybe on my second guest appearance, I’ll bring my boyfriend Johnny Depp.
Ms. Campbell may be contacted at campbellalexandra@hotmail.com
