If only there was a game show called ‘Name That Rock!’ I’d be amazing at it. I’d probably be the reigning champion, famous throughout Australia for my ability to discern various types of pebbles simply by feeling them.
Sadly, people are selected for prominence in different ways, leaving me as just the normal human being I am. No fame, no nothing. I didn’t even get accepted when I applied to be on ‘The Great Australian Trade Off’, probably because they were afraid and jealous of my great skills. And then, of course, they come up with week after week where my abilities could’ve shone. Obviously the one where they went and got some good quality aggregate in Narre Warren and had to create the perfect driveway topping was pretty great. Well, except for the parts where I was yelling at the screen. By definition, the contestants have to be amateurs, unlike professional driveway folks like myself. Mixing aggregate isn’t a game, after all. It’s not a simple task for the simplest of folk. Otherwise you end up with a knobbly driveway, amd nobody really wants that.
I can only assume that I was too good for the show. In my application, I revealed my great breadth of knowledge of aggregate and crushed stone, and they couldn’t have someone like me on the show. I’d breeze through every challenge, there would be no drama and it’d just get boring watching me win every week. No one really likes to watch that sort of thing; got to have just a smidgen of incompetence in everyone. It’s either that, or they’d already fulfilled their over-sixties quota.
Either way, I just have to watch, and hope that pebble gaming show is pitched by someone soon. Or maybe it’s going to be one of those traveling shows, where they go to various places and value one thing or another. So it’s Berwick and banana bunches one day, Carrum Downs garden supplies the other. People really do watch that kind of thing. Television nowadays really is quite strange, if you think about it.
-Karl