A dose of ‘reality’

A TV show pitch: ‘Man vs. Mild: Northwest Arkansas’

If, for some reason, my current gig doesn’t work out, I’m thinking I’ve got a new career all lined up. I’m going to be a reality TV star. The idea came to me the other night while the Lovely Mrs. Smith and I were eating dinner and watching television (no TV trays involved, but that’s really just a matter of time). We discovered we had already seen everything we’d recorded and we just couldn’t bring ourselves to get sucked into continuing our “House of Cards” binge-watching marathon (Spoiler Alert: Frank is Satan. But, I’m guessing you already knew that.).

Channel-surfing finally landed us on a show set in Charleston, S.C., that featured a group of people who appear to be in various stages of wrecking their respective trains, but who are at least doing it with delightful accents and who always pull out chairs for ladies (at least before passing out).

Hey, could be worse. It could be a lot of “Housewives of…” yelling and waving their talon-like fingers at each other.

Anyway, we weren’t too far into this before I realized I could do this! Of course, my enthusiasm was somewhat tempered by the realization that both my dogs could also do this. Or, that virtually any living person and several dead ones could do this. In fact, in some cases they could do it better, but let’s not spoil a good career option here.

I went so far as to put together a mental checklist of qualifications that I met. For instance, I can talk on a cell phone by putting it on speaker and holding it about 13 inches from my mouth. I don’t know why I would, since that’s not actually how you talk on a phone, but if called on, literally, I can.

My university years also proved I can partake to a probably greater-than-healthy degree in the products of some of America’s finest breweries, distilleries and vineyards. They also proved I was checked out on some of the lesser lights of those respective fields. Being a poor college student doesn’t pay all that well, after all.

It did, however, allow me to prove that, while I can recite the Greek alphabet while holding a burning match, I never had to recite the English alphabet backwards. And I thought not having gas money was a tragedy.

Of course, I’ve definitely got some strikes against me. For one, I actually have a day job. And while that’s certainly of some importance to a whole lot of people in my immediate “friend” group (like the Lovely Mrs. Smith, my kids and my mortgage company), it would cut into my ability to drive around aimlessly talking on the phone I’m holding out in a strange way.

It would also keep me from engaging in booze-fueled brunches, booze-fueled lunches, booze-fueled Happy Hours (needless redundancy), booze-fueled rounds of golf, booze-fueled dinners and booze-fueled parties (is there a theme here or is it just me?).

Also, the idea of a spraying someone a different color sounds like something I might do in college after I rattled off that Greek alphabet. The upper two-thirds of my face actually moves when I talk, and I can blink my eyes, which would put me in select company on the show.

And, the greatest sin of all, I’m not “colorful.” As in, unlike one of the show’s participants, I’ve never served time for cocaine possession, a stunt that led to firing from a job as state treasurer by a governor who later had to resign after he lied about hiking on the Appalachian Trail when, in reality, he was meeting his mistress.

A note here: I mean, I know I’m not really doing my part, but obviously you government guys in Little Rock are just going to have to try a little harder here.

Of course, it’s important to remember this show is set in a state that once thought firing on a U.S. fort, thereby starting a civil war, was a fine idea that was going to work out all hunky dory in the end.

So, despite my hopes otherwise, my reality show dreams are going to fall prey to, well, reality. No one really wants to watch a guy complain about having to reload a dishwasher or wonder where the baby aspirin he just dropped got to.

Hey, maybe I can get on “Survivor.” You don’t actually have to go outside for that, do you?