TV
Did the tv thing yesterday. That’s one long ass drive. Boston to Westport, same distance as London to Sheffield or Munich, Germany to Konstanz, Swizterland or Amsterdam to Dunkerque. That, and driving back through a couple of major white-out snowsqualls wasn’t much fun. But it was nice that zipcar has XM radio. It would be an even longer trip without it.
It was okay and I’m mostly glad I did it, but I wouldn’t do it again. It turned out I was in one of four groups of six “roundtables”. One of the six in each group was an employee of the show, as was the moderator/facilitator. It was a lot of waiting around. Someone likened it to jury duty, and I’d have to agree. I was there shortly before 11, my group started at around 1:15, and was done by 3:00 or so. Most were from NY, but some were from farther away (Detroit seemed farthest). My group had Brooklyn, Queens, employee from somewhere nearby (CT), Phila, and two from Boston (me and a woman from WRox). An awful lot of the people there seemed to know how things were going to work through the day, or knew people who worked there. Many had been exchanging e-mails with people in the place for what must have been quite some time. Weird.
The woman from Phila was a Chatty Cathy, and it was hard to get a word in edgewise, so I sort of gave up after a while. So it’s unlikely my mug would ever show up on the tube. That and there were, what, 24 people, not the five I was expecting. They’re planing on taking snippets of conversation and putting them in various parts of the show. I have no idea when this will happen. They gave us a episode guide and the topics are planned out through the end of June, so it seems unlikely it would show up before July, unless these snippets are shown during an already planned show.
I think I finally see the benefit of a support group. That’s the first time I’ve been in a room full of other diabetics. I don’t know any here, am single, and live alone. There’s really no one to chat with about this and sitting in that room waiting for something to happen was an eye opener. Yes, I do all this fund raising and volunteering and whatnot, but my dog really isn’t interested that I feel really shitty today. Or I should say he’s interested as long as I’m holding a treat. And while the bike ride has quite a few diabetics, most are Type I and it’s a week where you sort of try to get away from all that. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any support groups around here. So I guess I’ll keep going it alone.
Late in the day it dawned on me why I was selected for the program at all. One of the things they wanted to get into was what they were calling “Type 3’s”, those who are not diabetic, but who have some relationship (spouses, friends, children, parents, &c). As I think I was the token gay man there, that has to be what it was all about. Little do they know I have no relationships, so, I guess they lose. Ah well. Not even any dating material there!
That’s sort of what made the day kind of depressing and set me off into another funk. No, not that there was not dating material; I wasn’t expecting any. But everyone there did have others they were droning on and on about. Kids, husbands, wives, girlfiends, boyfriends, fiancés, and whatnot.
So, it was worth doing, but I wouldn’t do it again.
