Chinese culture has a tradition where a baby reaches out for an object on their first birthday, and that object represents what lies in that baby’s future. But I believe it might be the first TV show that a baby watched that is most telling about who it might grow up to be.
It was a Tuesday evening when my mother brought home a baby, born only a few days before, sat down gently on the couch, and turned the TV on. Jeopardy time. For as long as my mother has lived in the US, Alex Trebek has been a calming voice to a woman who had left India for the first time only to move to the unfamiliar place that is the US with no family to support her; this all while she pursued a medical career with a newly born baby and a husband that worked in NYC from dawn to dusk. And although she didn’t know it at the time, in her sheer exhaustion, Jeopardy became the first TV show I would ever watch.
Flash forward to 16 years later. I plop onto our old leather couch, fold my legs in the same exact way I had done for my entire life, and gave my undivided attention to the TV screen in front of me. Parents fall into the couch beside me. It was clear by the cracks that begin to form in the leather that this was something
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This love affair has continued on, and it is one that will never end. Jeopardy has inspired me to explore topics and subjects I may not have focused on without it, which led to pursue so many different things, whether it be partaking in Mock Trial, a financial club called NextGenVest, South Asian Club, creating business plans for Green Business, choreographing for our cultural performances, and so much more. It led me to take classes outside of my medical academy in high school, classes in criminology, markets and trading, astronomy, and so much more. Jeopardy may just be a TV show to most, but it will always be one of the many quirky puzzle pieces of my