We have a star in the family.

My wife appeared on the local noon news yesterday in an Ask the Doc segment. Her topic was kids and sleep, one that was especially timely given the time change this weekend and the state reading test that all third graders begin on Monday.[1]

It was a fairly quick three-minute appearance, but it was very much live and I think it’s ok for me to share that she was a little nervous. There was the nervousness that comes with being on live TV. But I think the thing that gave her the most issues was something we didn’t know about: live bits like hers often have to be roughly scripted ahead of time so that the closed captioning can be keyed in before the the actual segment.

So while she could talk about how much sleep kids need, get on average, and so on for hours, in the back of her head she had to make sure she was not drifting too far from the words she and the producers had agreed on ahead of time. I think that would freak me out more than being on live TV. I’d be afraid I’d start rambling, realize it, and then get super flustered because I knew I had screwed up the closed captioning.

She did great. Which is good because she’s going to be doing this every couple of months. It’s always good when the first experience isn’t a nightmare!

I have to give her a little grief. She told almost no one that she was going to be on. A couple of her sisters knew and that was about it. So her dad and step-mom were surprised when they looked up and saw her on their TV screen. That makes me laugh.

The girls’ reactions were funny, too. I recorded the segment and we watched it after we got back from volleyball and dinner. The first thing they did was laugh uncontrollably. M especially would not stop laughing like a donkey and making weird faces and body movements. I really should have recorded her reaction because it was completely ridiculous. I think they were all laughing just because it was so weird to look at the TV and see their mother’s face on it. I’m anxious to see if any of them bragged about it at school today.

The host took a quick pic and put it on Twitter before the segment aired, too. So S got her first live TV appearance and Tweet in the same day. Not bad for a Tuesday!

  1. Nice timing there, state of Indiana!  ↩