It's all right, cuz I'm Saved By the Bell: Part 1

I was in the perfect demographic for the television show Saved By the Bell. Good Morning, Miss Bliss, its predecessor, debuted in 1988, when I was turning 10 years old. And Saved By the Bell aired between 1989 and 1993, the midst of my tween years. I was completely in love with Zack Morris, played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar, to the point where I was directly responding to him whenever he broke the fourth wall.

When we took a family vacation to California in the summer of 1992, I was thirteen years old and in the peak of Saved By The Bell fandom. For one of the days during our trip, my mother and father had planned a day of sightseeing in Hollywood. We had just reached Grauman’s Chinese Theater when a man with a clipboard approached us. “Would you and your family be interested in attending a taping of Saved By the Bell,” he asked. My mouth dropped open and I looked at my parents with wide eyes, willing them with all my might to say yes. My mother asked the man, “I looked into this and I thought that my six- and eight-year old were too young.” The man casually responded, “Just tell the guy at the studio that they’re both eight. But, the bus is leaving, so let me know now.”

I can imagine that my face and pleading eyes were really hard to ignore. My parents were skeptical, as we had a lot planned for the day, but they had to give in when they saw me drop to my knees and grovel. (Note: I’m not sure if I actually did that, but that would have been my next step if they had said no.)

The five of us got on this bus that was meant to be sandy colored, but was more like the color of barf, with a big sphinx head on top. It was loud and smelly, and filled with loud and smelly people. My parents looked at each other with uncertainty, but decided to just go with it. After an hour and a half of driving around, as the driver was hopelessly lost and kept radioing for help yet misunderstanding the directions, we finally arrived at the studio for the taping. We and the loud, smelly people unloaded from the bus and stood in a line. A guy with a headset started moving down the line. He reached a few people ahead of us, said something to them, and they turned and went back on the bus. Then, he came to my family.

“Those girls are too young,” he said pointing at my sisters. “The bus will bring you back to the Chinese theater in a few minutes.” Now, for those of you who don’t know my parents, when they don’t like how something is being handled, they speak up. I can’t say that I blame them for getting upset about this one. We had cancelled our other plans and just spent an hour and a half of our day on a pukey Sphinx bus, only to be told to spend another hour and a half on the pukey Sphinx bus. I started to cry because I saw my chances of getting Mark-Paul Gosselaar to fall madly and hopelessly in love with me slowly fading away. I’m sure that my tears also fueled the Mom and Dad fire. They began to protest. My mother said, “Now, wait a minute. We specifically asked back in Hollywood if the girls’ ages would be a problem, and the man said no.” Headset Guy didn’t seem very sympathetic and said “sorry” with a not-very-sorry shrug. My parents began to protest in louder voices; then they demanded to see the producer or whoever was in charge. Headset Guy replied, “Look, why can’t you be like that other family and just get back on the bus?” Wrong thing to say, Headset Guy.

When my father gets really mad at people, the whites of his eyes blaze like Judge Doom’s after his fake eyeballs pop out in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Dad’s very kind and pretty mild-mannered typically (My mother’s the pitbull of the duo.) But, my father was white-eyed Judge Doom mad at Headset Guy. I don’t remember the actual words that were said. I just know that my mother and father tag-teamed and lit into this guy for a solid five-ten minutes, until he agreed that he would get one of the producers to come out and talk to us.

Tune in next time to find out if we made it!