Hung Truong: The Blog!

Winning at Jeopardy

December 12, 2012 | 2 Minute Read

I just had another dream that felt very real up to the moment when I checked my phone and realized I hadn’t won on Jeopardy. I might need to start up a series on my blog about weird dreams if this keeps up.

There was a news story on AnnArbor.com yesterday about a local Ann Arbor guy appearing on Jeopardy that I tweeted from my parody account, so that’s probably what fueled this weird dream.

For some reason I’m on the Jeopardy website, checking out the hall of fame. I vaguely recall having been on Jeopardy. This is cool because my old friend Susan was always trying to get onto Jeopardy and now I can brag to her that I was on it. I investigate further and realize that not only did I appear, but I won! My total winnings amounted to around $21,000 in June of 2011. At this point I’m wondering why I never got the check from Alex.

The first thing I did was search for “jeopardy” in my gmail (this is also what I do in real life if I need to remember something). This was harder than I expected, because spelling “jeopardy” in a dream is harder than in real life. That only brought up two random emails, so I checked the hall of fame webpage again. It listed that my email address on file was “[email protected].” So apparently a typo was all that stood in the way of me and my prize money.

The website had an email form to fill out (as well as a fax number) for corrections, etc. I didn’t really question why the public-facing website had so much information on it. As I raced to fill out my correct information “I regret to inform you that you have not paid me yet, and I am the Hung Truong who won back in 2011”, I woke up to the sobering reality that I was never a Jeopardy winner.

That’s always the hardest moment. Realizing that you didn’t win at Jeopardy, don’t have an awesome dog, etc. sucks. But I guess I can take consolation in the fact that today is a new day where literally anything is possible (except for winning at Jeopardy, obviously).