HMPH

Okay, I am just a bit peeved right now. Let me explain.

Follow me if you will all the back to 1993. I was a junior in high school, and I was pretty happy with life as I knew it. However, I harbored a dream. It wasn't a secret dream, mind you. Most of my friends (I think) knew about my aspirations to be, as I put it, "just like Oprah."

And so, I wrote her a letter. I poured my heart out to her, told her all about how I wanted to be just like her, and wasn't it so ironic that I happen to live in the area where she worked just prior to making it big in Chicago? I even threw in the fact that I used to watch her on "People Are Talking" with Richard Sher all the time, and that I just knew meeting her and shadowing her for a day to see how she did what she did would be kismet.

Never heard from the bitch.

However, imagine my surprise when I turned on the TV one afternoon after school to watch my beloved Oprah, only to find that she had some nine-year-old on, who had written her a letter, telling her that she wanted to be a talk show host...

I was irate!!!

Obviously I've never forgotten this, and there is a part of me that hasn't gotten over it. Let's fast forward to today, September 12, 2010.

I'm watching the season premiere of the final season of the Oprah show. I knew she'd be pulling out all the stops. John Travolta escorting her out to greet the audience, Don Johnson presenting her with the rhinestone glasses she sent to him back in 1986, blah, blah, blah. What I didn't bank on, however, was that Oprah would try to find the little nine-year-old who dreamed of being a talk show host...Well, she did.

And that little snot-nosed brat turned into a 26-year-old teacher from New Jersey. A noble profession, of course. Well, what does Oprah do but surprise this woman in the middle of her teaching day to tell her to get her ass outside to a car that's waiting for her to take her to the airport for a flight to Chicago to attend the season premiere.

How nice.

And what did Oprah just surprise her studio audience with? That'd be a trip to Australia. With John Travolta as pilot.

So this little bitch gets to go to Australia with Oprah. And I'm watching at home. And Christ, now Paul Simon has surprised the audience with a serenade.

Where did I go wrong?