Prompt, Response, and Comments

Student Maxine Poupko at work on a story.

Popular

By Maxine Poupko

Oprah is popular, but sometimes she bugs the shit out of me. 

I succeeded for a few weeks in not watching TV first thing in the morning. But I caved last Sunday. Well, it’s Sunday and I’m going to make an exception on weekends.

Then I changed my rule again. I decided that first thing in the morning I would only let myself watch movies that had a good Jungian based message, something that had redeeming value, instead of Say Yes to the Dressor 90 Day Fiancé. 

So, Sunday I watched Chocolat. I loved it. Great message. Everything changes—life, death, rebirth. Shit happens, but hang in there long enough, and transformation occurs. I searched the Internet for more Jungian based themes.

This morning, I was too cranky to start a movie. So, I altered my plan and let myself watch a few minutes of that annoying Super Soul Sunday, because Edith Eva Eger, a 91-year-old holocaust survivor, was being interviewed. She just published a book about how we all have choices in our lives, no matter what has happened to us. The theme was educational enough for altering my rules.

I liked her. But Oprah was getting on my nerves, and for the first time in my life, I heard myself yelling at my TV.

“Can you shut the fuck up, Oprah?!!”

I’ve seen the popular Ms. O do this countless times in her interviews. She is so focused on what’s in her own mind to say during the interview, that she cuts off her guest. Or the guest will say something so deep and meaningful, and my mind wants to catch it, but Oprah immediately changes the subject to meet her agenda and what’s in her own mind.

I’m not interested in Oprah’s aha moment. I’m interested in mine. 

And please, don’t fucking call everyone who watches a SuperSouler. I am not a SuperSouler!

Since I never yelled at the TV before today, I began to think, OMG! I’m becoming my father.He used to yell like a mad man in front of the TV, when he watched football or tennis matches. It scared the shit out of me when he did it.

Everything was calm and suddenly I’d hear him yell, “You idiot! The ball was out!”

Edith Eva Eger was so full of one-liners filled with wisdom that I had to keep rewinding to hear her words. I wanted take a moment to focus on what this astounding holocaust survivor, who has become a world renown psychologist was saying, but Oprah kept rudely interrupting her. 

She was talking about waiting in a line in Auschwitz, with her mother in the middle and she and her sister on either side of her. Dr. Mengele, known as the angel of death, asked her if the woman next to her was her mother or her sister.   

Eger said, “It’s my mother.”

Even at 91, she told Oprah that to this day, she hasn’t forgiven herself. 

Those words caused him to send her mother to one side, and she and her sister to the other side.

He told her, “Your mother is just going to take a shower, and then she will be back.”

Her mother said to her before she walked away, “We don’t know where we’re going, but just remember: No one can take away from you what you put here in your own mind,” as she pointed to her head.

And in the next split second, the very popular Oprah changed the subject.

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Our classmates are then asked, “What drew you in and what do you want to know more about. Here are the comments:

Jimmy: What’s Super Soul Sunday?

Nickell: I was drawn to the intimacy. The writer brought me into her world with a great level of detail. So rich and human.

Susan: This narrator is funny. I want to hear more about her father.

Jill: I love how the writer gave a smackdown to someone popular and she used humor to tell the story.

Andrea: I was so drawn in by the specificity of the narrator’s habits and rules and then how she cheats. I’m so in. The line, “I’m not interested in Oprah’s aha moments. I’m interested in mine.” Love it! And the interview. I feel like I am experiencing the interview the way the narrator did.