Before Jersey Shore, The Hills & The City, there was*…

Have I ever told you about that one time I was on an MTV reality show? Actually, I know the answer to that. I haven’t. Up until now, I have preferred to push that memory to the back of my brain and have actually done a pretty good job of it. Like, to that point that once in a great while it will occur to me that I was on an MTV reality show and I’ll be surprised: I was on an MTV reality show?! I had no idea! Oh, wait…

The blessed event was about eight years ago and I figure since it was almost a decade ago, it might be time to tell you all about it! Plus, I don’t think I need to worry about the video winding up on the Internet**, since the only copy in existence (well, in my existence…Okay, actually, in my parents’ existence) is a VHS tape. Thank you, VHS, for going the way of the beta! (Oh, who am I kidding, I still have a VHS player.)

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Without further ado, allow me to present…

…a Home Sweet Sarah Production…In association with House Party Films…

(Brought to you by Solo plastic cups, Nokia cell phones, and Natural Light beer):

“That One Time I Was On An MTV Reality Show”

I was 19 years old and attending community college at Harvard on the Hill, otherwise known as Bakersfield College. A friend of a friend – let’s call him…Don – sat in front of me in Political Science. We would chat before and after class, exchange notes when one or the other slept in and didn’t go to class couldn’t make it to class for some studious reason. It was a friendship of convenience, more than anything.

One day he mentioned that he was going to be on a new MTV reality show that was soon going to be taping in Bakersfield. Over the next few days, Don kept pestering me to “audition” for the show, as well. Being on an MTV reality show wasn’t exactly my bag and so I kept declining his offer. No thank you, decline. Not really my thing, decline. NOT INTERESTED, decline.

Somehow a producer for the show got my phone number (hmm, I wonder how that happened) and convinced me to come in for an interview/audition. I walked into the Radisson or the Ramada or whatever to find this “producer” sitting cross-ways on a chair in the lobby, talking on the phone with her boyfriend. (Oh, to work for MTV, right?) She and I had a very awkward interview wherein I probably came off as the most boring person ever, BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT TO BE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

[Come to think of it, why WAS I there? Maybe it was the days before I had a cell phone or caller ID? Maybe I – quell horror! – actually had to answer the phone without knowing who was going to be on the other end, thus getting roped into it that way? Who knows. But either way, I went.]

So the interview was bad and I didn’t get asked to be on the show, which was FINE WITH ME. The night of the taping rolled around, though, and a bunch of us decided to go to the party where the show was going to be filmed. In hopes, you know, of maybe ending up in the background or something. Haha, the background.

Once at the party, Don asked me aside and proceeded to tell me how much he liked me***. I didn’t know how to response (HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO THAT?) and so I told him – with my red keg cup blocking my face – that I wasn’t interested, that I had a boyfriend (“Look! There he is three feet away from us!”) but that maybe we could get coffee sometime? Later. To discuss things. Later.

My friends and I left the party immediately after that and as I recall, it was near the end of the semester, so I (luckily) didn’t have to see Don too many times after that incident. Oh, and we never did get that coffee.****

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*The show was called FM Nation and the premise was to follow college-aged kids from a “normal” town around for one Saturday night to see what “normal” kids in “normal” towns did for fun. In case you couldn’t tell, it was a short-lived show. Bakersfield was the first of maybe four episodes total; I believe the second episode was somewhere in Nebraska or Kansas. Since FM Nation, MTV has obviously wisened up and realized shows in pretty places with pretty people and pretty music fare much better than shows about kids…Cow tipping.

**I don’t THINK it’s on the Internet. I’ve never checked, nor will I ever check…

***He actually “confessed” his love for me. Not “professed,” but “confessed.” And then later, he puked in a toilet with a litter box next to it. Imagine if I had said yes. Wait, let’s not.

****Speaking of hot liquids, one of the other groups they followed around that night was a group of older (read: 21 year old) girls who went bar-hopping in downtown Bakersfield. One of the girls participated in a wet t-shirt contest and apparently the water they threw on her was hot. Burning hot. Scolding hot, as she put it. Haha, scolding hot.

We sher do have gud publik skools in Bakersfield, dont we!