We have a winner

Some of the people who were at the seminar on Friday didn't come back on Saturday, but there was still a pretty big group of attendees. The first thing we did was gather together in our small groups to talk about the adventures we had. The two team leaders in my group—a petite, young-looking Filipina girl named Maryann and an older woman named Madge—ushered us over to a corner of the room to stand in a circle and tell our stories. We would be arranged a few more times throughout the weekend into our small groups to talk, and each time we were placed very carefully together, as if our leaders were trying to get us to stand in very specific places. (It wasn’t until Sunday that I would realize that there were green Xs marked on the ceiling at particular spots and the team leaders had been instructed to place their groups directly under the green X.) Maryann and Madge seemed anxious and asked us many times to make sure we brought our proof that we had completed the task. We couldn’t win without proof.

When we each started to tell the team leaders about our adventures, I was sure I wouldn’t win. My adventure had been fun and different from what I normally do, but it wasn’t THAT different. Really, you put a few drinks into me and I’ll stop anyone on the street and ask them anything.

But when I told my group about my adventure, they were impressed. Actually, I ended up being only one of two people in my group of 10 who did anything at all for the adventure. The other woman who did the assignment, Rebecca, had chosen to get up very early in the morning and swim out into Lake Michigan. Since we were the only two who did anything, the vote was between us. It was close, but the group chose me. Now I had to get up on stage and tell the crowd about my adventure, which was about 100 times scarier than stopping random strangers on the street.

The small groups dispersed back into the larger audience and a guy with brown spiky hair who I'd never seen before bounded onto the stage and asked the winners of each group to come up and stand with him. I was surprised to see that Sarah had won her group as well—-I guess talking to strangers sounded impressive to her group, too. We stood next to each other with nine other people on the stage.

The first guy to tell his story announced that he had done nothing the night before. I couldn’t believe it. How did he even win his group?! Whatever--at least he tried to turn it into a funny story. Then Sarah and I told our nearly identical stories. A guy after us told a funny story about how he had taken a fellow audience member whom he just met the night before out to the riverboat casinos and taught him how to play Black Jack. They actually won a few hundred dollars. After the Black Jack guy, there were a few more adventures but I can’t even remember what they were.

The second to last person up was a young, buff, Italian-looking guy named Maury. He started out talking about his father and how his parents had gotten divorced and his father had left the family and gone on to marry someone else and have kids with his new wife. It had been a long time since he had even talked to his dad. At this point in the story, he got choked up and had a hard time getting the rest of it out. “So for my adventure last night,” he told us, “I decided to call up my dad. I decided to ask him if I could… um… take him out. Dinner or something. Just the two of us.” Maury paused for a long time. “So I did. I called him. And you know what he said? He said no. He said he was going to take his new kids out and he just couldn’t meet me.” Maury paused again as he gathered himself together. “And you know what that was? That was closure,” he said.

He handed the mic to the girl next to him and everyone in the audience and on the stage wiped a tear or took a breath and we all barely kept it together. The guy standing next to Maury gave him a firm clap on the back and nodded to him while they both blinked back some more tears.

The girl Maury handed the mic to stepped forward and started crying before she even said her first word. “Hi, I’m Amy,” she said, through tears. Amy told us that not only did she never know her dad, but for much of her childhood she didn’t even know she had a dad. Her mom had considered her dad a mere sperm donor and not even worthy of mentioning. In grade school, Amy had an argument with her teacher about whether she had a dad. She insisted that she did not, and her teacher had to explain to her that she was probably not immaculately conceived. She went home that night and her mom confirmed that her teacher was right and that somewhere out in the world a man existed who was her father.

Just this year, through a family member and the power of the Internet, she had gotten the name and contact information of her nonexistent father. And so for her adventure, she finally got up the courage to email him and let him know that he has a daughter. She had in fact just hit “Send” before she left to come to the seminar, and now she felt so terrified and excited and empowered that she barely even knew what to do.

I glanced down at my little green notebook with "happy" written in 10 different languages. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to win.

The brown-haired guy who was working the microphone came on the stage and told the audience that they would be picking the winner with their applause. Losers would be sent back to their seats and the audience was instructed to give each loser a warm, loud round of applause as they walked back. Well, Sarah, the guy who did nothing, and I were sent back to sit down immediately.

The applause-o-meter worked quickly through the contestants since we all knew it was between Maury and Amy. The two were last on the stage and we all gave our final, rip-roaring applause for... Amy! She won a free personal consultation (a $250 value) and everyone in her group won one of Imelda's books.

With the contest out of the way, our empathy nerves on edge, and hours before we'd break for lunch, Adolph and Imelda were ready to start the show.