At one point in your life, I’m sure you were suckered into something.
Maybe it was something that looked amusing at a store and you wanted to buy it, and then three days later you realized you had no use for it. You could only regret buying it after watching it collect dust.
Maybe it was somebody telling you to go see a movie and after you watched it you felt like you had wasted two hours of your time and life. The story was not captivating, the acting was horrible, and the entire movie was hardly credible.
With New Year’s Eve right around the corner and the idea of being suckered after Christmas fresh in everyone’s minds, I can remember being suckered on New Year’s Eve, 1996.
Oh, it’s a sad yet funny tale.
I was 9 years old and really had nothing to do. My parents went across the street to attend a party at the neighbor’s house while my sisters and I stayed at home. My sisters, God love them, took control of the big, 36’’ television downstairs, forcing me to entertain myself for the evening upstairs on the smaller TV set.
Yes, when you’re the only boy sibling, you can be outnumbered.
At any rate, I skimmed the channels trying to find something to watch. Wouldn’t I know it, my favorite channel at the time, Nickelodeon, was airing a marathon of my favorite shows; I’m talking the classics right now: Doug, Rocko’s Modern Life, Hey Arnold!, and Rugrats.
While all these brain-rotting cartoons were playing, I noticed something during the commercial breaks. Every time a show went to break, some Nickelodeon personality would come on and talk about their “secret plan” for midnight. Apparently they had a “huge surprise planned for the New Year, which had never been done before and was supposed to shock everyone.”
“Wow,” I thought in my naiveté. “This could be something really awesome!!”
It got to be around 11:00 and I’ll admit, I was dying of anticipation. What were they going to do? How was it going to affect me? Is it going to be something outrageous? All of these thoughts swirled in my head.
As midnight approached and we were about to kiss 1996 goodbye, one of the Nick personalities came on to reveal the much anticipated surprise. I was ready for it, I was excited, and I was leaning toward the TV with a huge grin on my face…
Only to be incredibly and utterly disappointed.
The so-called “big surprise” was that Nickelodeon was going to slime Josh Server.
Who is Josh Server, you might ask? Exactly.
He was one of the worst actors on Nickelodeon’s kiddy, rip-off version of Saturday Night Live, a show called All That. He had (maybe) one good skit he was involved in on the show, but other than that he was considered to be one of the more downplayed and not-so-good actors on All That.
I couldn’t believe it. A whole night of anticipation…for that???!! More like a whole night of my life wasted away and robbed of what could have been an awesome surprise.
Maybe if Nickelodeon had said the big surprise is, “we are giving away a million dollars” it would have been kind of good. Better yet, if they had told us “the cast of All That will be making a surprise appearance at your house to give you a million dollars” it would have been better.
Looking back, I’m not sure what exactly I had expected. There’s only so much Nickelodeon can do to make a few kids happy, but I’ll admit, they sure were great at suckering me that night. I fell into their trap, as did others.
The next day, one my best friends called me on Nickelodeon’s “surprise.” He expressed his disgust at what they did and said how miserable he was when they revealed what they were going to do.
“I didn’t care,” he told me. “Why should I care if Josh Server gets slimed? I thought it was going to be epic, but it was just really dumb.”
He was right. I mean, it wouldn’t have been so bad if they didn’t make it sound like the greatest thing; the way the described it made it sound like they had the biggest, coolest, most amazing thing planned for midnight and it wound up being absolutely nothing.
I can’t really say I was completely robbed that night, however. I mean, I was able to relax and enjoy a fine night of cartoons, something every 9 year-old boy is entitled to. But looking at the situation overall, it was a bust.
New Year’s Eve, 1996 basically severed my trust ties with Nickelodeon. They built me up to knock me down. How could they do that to such an innocent young boy?
They suckered me that night. Really hard.
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