Sometimes late at night -- even when I'm exhausted -- I get caught up watching a repeat of Oprah. The worst part of this is not that I watch Oprah, or that TV can keep me up even though I know I will want to die in the morning. The worst part is, in all honesty, that watching Oprah always makes me feel bad about myself.
I think it started when I found out that some kid from my high school was flown out to Chicago to be on an episode of Oprah. I didn't even watch the episode. I refused. But he was supposed to be on there talking about how he got into Harvard, or so I've been told. That made me think, she won't have David Letterman on her show (who by the way has been petitioning for years to be a guest), but she'll fly out some kid from my high school? Who is this woman? I'll tell you who she is, she's Oprah! She controls lives!
The epitomy of this low self-esteem creation came when she did an episode on how women are waiting longer and longer to have kids. Every three minutes or so Oprah would remind us that women have biological clocks and that we cannot have children forever. "We only have a 20 year period during which we can have kids!" "Before you know it you won't have any kids if you don't have them soon! Once you turn 20 your clock starts ticking!!" This was right around the time of my 20th birthday and I remember sitting on the couch at home over winter break and getting anxious. I physically could not sit still at the thought of what she was saying. Must go out. Must have kids.... I was being conditioned, brain-washed, if you will. By the time my mom got home, all she saw was her 20 year-old daughter, on the couch, in the fetal position, hugging the horrified dog, crying and saying "Oh god! My clock is ticking! It's over for me! Cats! Me and cats!"
For you to understand my mother's horror you have to know the following two things about me: One, I don't cry. Two, I don't actually want to have kids (or so I say). It's pretty safe to assume my mother has yet to recover from this event.
You'd think I would have learned my lesson, but if you do think that you haven't been listening. Recently I stayed up watching an episode on people who mysteriously found true love. One couple met on Extreme Makeover and are now having their first child. Another couple met when she had leukemia, and he saved her life by donating bone marrow for her transplant. Realistically, any show that makes me want to have leukemia so that I can meet the man of my dreams should immediately be discontinued. But the point of this confession is that I'm merely a slave to Oprah's twisted version of reality.
Well, there's also the secret hope that she'll have me on her show to talk about how she makes me pathetic. (Seriously, Big O. You know you want it).
