Goodbye Alex Trebek

 

I was so sad yesterday when I saw the news on Twitter that Alex Trebek had died.

Yes, all fans knew in the back of our minds that this was possibly coming soon.  But I think we all hoped he would beat this cancer and be around for many more years. So like any death of someone you care for, it still came as a shock.

I don't know how I will feel tonight when I turn on Jeopardy at dinner time to watch Alex and the contestants, knowing he is now gone.

I first started watching Jeopardy in the 70's with then host Art Fleming.  

I'm not someone that likes games or game shows usually.  As a matter of fact I watched no other game shows at the time, and I don't right now.  But Jeopardy was different. Whenever I was home from school and it was on I would watch it.  The game board was more primitive those days than the one we see now.  But the game then followed the same familiar pattern as the one today.  Art Fleming was the host until 1975.

Then in the 1980's (1984) Jeopardy was back with a new host, Alex Trebek.

Alex was wonderful.  He was smart, handsome, and elegant.  I was hooked on the show again.

What was also great was that in my viewing area Jeopardy was on around dinner time. Right now it airs Monday-Saturday at 7:30pm.  It was and is the perfect dinner time or after dinner time viewing.

For years I pondered whether to take the Jeopardy test to become a contestant.  These days my memory is not always so great, but in my younger days I had a great memory for all sorts of information and trivia.  I was very good at playing Jeopardy at home along with the contestants on TV.

As I said, I'm not a games person.  In the 80's and early 90's I used to play Trivial Pursuit at lunch time with my work colleagues. Though they beat me on questions about sports and cars, my strength was in questions about movies, TV, popular culture, history, art, etc.  Some of my co-workers, who also watched Jeopardy, started to try and encourage me to take the test to become a contestant. They were sure I would win.

But I never took the test.  I was afraid that being shy I would freeze in front of the cameras. I also feared that on my day I would get a sports category, and that would be deadly for me. But I was also worried about disappointing Alex Trebek.  

In the past 10 or so years I worked at a job that had later hours. So I rarely got home from work in time to watch Jeopardy and couldn't continue my "life long" habit.  But if I was home I never missed watching Jeopardy repeats on Saturdays at 7:30pm.

Then came the pandemic and I was sent to work from home in March 2020 and I could resume my pleasurable habit of watching Jeopardy at the end of the work day while I had dinner every night.  And then recently I retired and continued watching Monday through Saturday. 

I plan to continue watching tonight, through Alex Trebek's last show on December 25.  But it will be different starting tonight because I and all the Jeopardy viewers will know Alex is no longer with us.

Rest in Peace Alex Trebek