A Modern Ritual
“It’s time to play $pin The Wheel! And here’s your host, Tom Harlan!”
The voice sang out “Tom” with two distinct notes: first high, then low but rising in pitch and volume until landing on “Harlan”. The second ‘a’ in “Harlan” boomed through the room as a well-built, middle aged man strutted onto the brightly lit stage. He wore a well-fitted grey suit and broad, black shoes. His orangish skin contrasted starkly with his dark eyebrows and short white hair. In front of the stage was a seated crowd of about 50 people, who clapped and cheered energetically.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to $pin The Wheel” he bellowed over the sounds of the crowd, coming to a stop at the centre of the stage. The applause bled into his next few sentences before quieting down. “Tonight, we’ve got a great show for you folks,” he said, every word dripping with canned enthusiasm. “Two contestants are going head-to-head, testing their knowledge and quick thinking for cash prizes! We’ve got a grand prize of one million dollars, so let’s go meet the lucky contestants!”
The crowd replied with another round of cheers and applause as the man gestured with a sweeping arm to the two other people on stage. Each person stood behind a tall wooden block emblazoned with “$ P I N T H E W H E E L” in colourful block symbols. Under that was something else; it was different on each podium. Both people beamed at the man while he walked towards the woman behind the podium with “B R I D G I T” on it. Her auburn hair seemed to poorly fit her narrow head and her gaunt face clashed with the ample breasts tucked inside her royal blue T-shirt. She squirmed giddily when the man spoke to her.
“Hi Bridgit! Tell me about yourself”
“Well um…” she began, her voice nasal and high pitched. “I am a waitress from Boulder, Colorado and I love to ski and hike and spend time with my wonderful husband, who is in the audience,” She pointed into the crowd as a man shot up and shouted, “I love you baby!”
“Oh, well isn’t that just sweet,” he said through a large, yellowing smile. “Well, moving right along we have our second contestant, Derek!”
“Hi Tom,” The man behind the other podium greeted warmly. He was a short, bald man with an oddly large mouth. The bright lights on the stage reflected off the crown of his head. His pale blue shirt with buttons on it clung tightly to his torso.
“Hi Derek. Tell me. What do you do?”
“So… I’m a teacher. I teach 7th Grade in Saint Louis, Missouri, and I’ve got two beautiful girl’s at home, Janet and Sabrina. I’ve loved this show for a long time and I’m just real excited to be on.”
“Well we’re excited to have you on as well,” the man in the suit said as he turned back to the crowd. “Now, let’s get started with round one! Bring out the wheel!”
The crowd cheered once more as a tall blonde entered the stage. With her, she brought a large wheel on a rolling black frame. The wheel itself was divided 5 times into 32 equal parts. Each part was vibrantly coloured and had a unique black symbol one it. On the left side of the wheel, a red arrow pointed to the leftmost part of the edge of the circle. After bringing the wheel to its place, to the left of the podiums, the blonde paused to smile and bat her eyes at the crowd. She walked off the stage, swinging her hips in an exaggerated motion with each step.
“Bridgit, you’re up, go give the wheel a spin,” the man in the suit said as the crowd again applauded.
She made her way from behind the podium to the wheel and grabbed hold of the edge. She extended her arm straight up and pulled the edge of the wheel down with her whole body. The wheel became a blur of colour. It trilled with clicks as each segment passed the red arrow. As the wheel slowed, the time between each click grew longer and longer until it finally stopped. The crowd burst into another round of clapping and cheering as the man in the suit shouted out “It’s Rhyme Time!”
The woman returned to her podium, bouncing with excitement.
“Alright,” he began, “the point goes to the contestant who stays in the game the longest. If you say a word that doesn’t rhyme or fail to give a word within two seconds, then you’re out.” He held the word “you’re”, swinging the energy around until releasing it in a burst on “out”. “Bridgit, you’ll start. Your word is ear.”
“Spear!” the woman blurted back, eyes wide.
“Beer!” the man behind the other podium quickly said, leaving his mouth hanging open.
“Deer!”
“Jeer!”
“Leer!”
“Smear!”
“uh.. Clear!”
“Hear!”
“Year!”
“Rear?” he said awkwardly. A few people in the crowd giggled.
“Near!”
“Peer!”
The man in the suit narrowed his eyes at the man behind the podium and a few audience members gasped. A few seconds passed before he realised that they were waiting on him.
“Oh.. uh.. Fear!” he said, correcting himself.
“Gear!” the woman said, desperation in her voice.
“Uh.. uh…S..-” the man behind the podium began in a panic before he was cut off by the man in the suit.
“Ooh, sorry Derek, but you took too long, which means that Bridgit gets our first point!”
The crowd erupted into applause and the woman squealed with delight.
“Well Derek, you didn’t get so lucky on the first round, but let’s see if you can make up for it in the second. Go ahead and spin the wheel!”
The man made his way to the wheel and spun it with force. The crowd had already started to cheer and laugh before the wheel stopped.
“We-he-hell,” the man in the suit chuckled, “it looks like our night is getting interesting right off the bat because it’s time to play…” he paused to take in a deep breath while raising his arm, “DOLLARS OR DINNER!” he finally said, punching the air.
The crowd cheered, louder than they had yet.
“So Derek, are you gonna play, or are you gonna pass it over to Bridgit?”
“Well Tom, I sure love money, but I had a big lunch and have no interest in what you’re cooking up today. Plus, this is my good shirt!”
The crowd and the people on the stage all laughed together.
“So you’re passing?” the man in the suit asked.
“I’m passing,” he responded, looking relieved.
“Alright, well, Bridgit, you know the rules. If you get the question right, you get as much money as you can catch. And if you guess wrong, well,” he chuckled, “you get enough food to feed a small village — right on your head. You ready?”
“I’m ready, Tom,” she said, shaky with fear and anticipation.
“Alright, well here we go. On the menu today is a creamy, three-cheese spaghetti. So the question is about the history of spaghetti. In what book is the first written record of spaghetti?”
“Oh,” she groaned. “I.. uh.. well.” Her eyes darted around the room. “Spaghetti is Italian and.. um.. I think the oldest Italian book is Don Quixote.” She said “Quixote” like “quicks oat.”
“Is that your final answer?” the man in the suit asked.
“Yeah,” she responded, wincing.
She gave the crowd an apologetic look.
“Well lets see what it is!” he announced as the crowd began to chant.
“Dollars or Dinner”
“Dollars or Dinner!”
The chant had a well-rehearsed rhythm to it, like it had been done many times before.
“Dollars or Dinner!”
The accent landed on the first syllable of each word and then left one beat before starting again.
“Dollars or Dinner!”
Slowly the crowd began to chant louder and faster. The woman hunched her back slightly and faced straight up. Her elbows were tucked into her chest and her hands weakly shielded her grimacing face. Her eyes were wide and her mouth hung open for her rapid breaths. She was shaking.
“Dollars or Dinner!” The crowd had now worked itself up into a frenzy. Some stood up from their chairs and clapped to the beat.
The woman let out a piercing scream that cut through the sounds of the crowd.
A moment passed. The crowd fell silent. The woman slowly returned to her normal stance. The man in the suit’s face darkened and his posture slumped.
“Peer?!” he roared at the man behind the podium. Everyone jumped at the sudden sound. “Is that even a word?! How many times do we have to go over this? It’s beer, jeer, smear, hear, rear, fear, you fucking moron!”
“I-I’m sorry. I’ll get it right next time.”
The man in the suit let out a forceful sigh. “Okay, lets run it again,” he called out in a huff.
“I don’t think the issue is that he said the word wrong at first” someone in the crowd piped.
“Yeah!” another one agreed. “Cause he said it all right last time and it didn’t work then either. I still think the issue is that we don’t have enough people in the crowd. In the video there are exactly 75 people and we only have 47.”
“And where are these people going to come from, exactly?” the man in the suit asked with irritation. “Everyone else is running the generator to keep these lights as bright as they are. Unless we start giving them bigger rations, we are either going to have dim lights or dead workers”
“Maybe we can give them some of the extra food that you’ve been getting” another voice shouted from the back.
The crowd murmured in agreement.
“I have the most attention on me, so I should look as big as the guy in the video. We’ve been over this” he snapped.
“This isn’t going to work. We’re wasting our resources running this stupid experiment over and over,” a voice stated bluntly.
No one said a word. The woman on the stage began to sob. “She’s right.” she choked, her voice deeper now. She took off her wig and threw it on the ground. Her real hair was thin and tangled. “We’ve been doing this for so long and and we still don’t even know if we are getting any closer. What if we replicate everything perfectly and it still doesn’t work?”
“Well do you have any better ideas?” the man at the other podium replied, frustrated. “The people in the video did all of this weird shit and then food fell on them. Why not for us? And we’ve only got enough rations to last us another 2 months. If we can get this thing working… I mean, you saw just how much food she got in the video. If we can get this thing working, we will never have to worry about food ever again.”
“We don’t even know where the video came from,” she insisted. “We’ve been trying to do what the people in the video did when we don’t know anything about them. The video must be 1000 years old by now!”
The crowd began in an uproar. “Well we have to do something!” one voice said. “If you start talking like that it’ll never work!” shouted another. “Why did we even let her be the girl? I was better when I was her age!” an elderly woman barked.
“Enough!” the man in the suit commanded. “Tomorrow we can try adding a few more people to the crowd. I’ll give up some of my extra rations. Let’s just keep trying. The more we argue, the more time we waste. We just need to believe.” The crowd quieted down obediently. He turned and nodded to a man hiding off stage and walked out of sight.
“It’s time to play $pin The Wheel! And here’s your host, Tom Harlan!”