Throwback Thursday: Winning Carl Kasell’s Message on Wait Wait 5 Years Ago Today

It all started over seven years ago when I sent in an e-mail to Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! asking if I could be a listener contestant and that it would make for an awesome birthday present and added a small note about my Wait Wait Stats Page. I later found out that I was selected to be the listener contestant for the Not My Job round when Monica Seles was on as the guest back in 2009. Unfortunately, she kind of goose egged and I didn’t get to win Carl Kasell’s voicemail message.

Fast forwarding to April 2011, I got a call from one of the Wait Wait producers who asked me I wanted to be a listener contestant on the coming week’s taping. The producer kind of felt bad about the whole Monica Seles not scoring well on the game. So, I accepted the offer and was lined up to be the first listener contestant on the show that taped exactly five years ago today, April 21, 2011, and later aired on my birthday. You can listen to the segment below:

I’m not sure how much of it was reflected in my voice or mannerisms, or muted by the not-so-great headset I was using, but I had a strong mix of nervousness, anxiety, excitement and tiredness coursing through me. By the end of the segment, I had done enough to get Carl Kasell to record a voicemail message for me:

 

Although I haven’t deployed Carl’s message on a voicemail device, it still is nice to have a small piece of Carl’s voice to call my own.