Roy Wood Jr. Apologizes to a Former Teacher’s Aide After His ‘Jeopardy’ Performance

I am not a good tester. I never have been. My ability to recall information in a testing environment is so bad that I was once talked into doing a trivia contest while on a cruise, and it still haunts me (and not just because I had to watch someone collect potato wedges with their bare hands from the public c… trough even though there were tongs). My then-girlfriend/now-wife insisted I participate in the comic book trivia contest on the ship. If there’s anything I know too much about, it’s superhero comics. That did not save me.

Like Eminem, my palms were sweaty, my knees were weak, and I was wearing a T-shirt that was too big. I buckled down for the contest, expecting to ace the twenty questions, and didn’t even place. The minor defense I have is that I answered one of the questions correctly (as did everyone else) and was told otherwise by an annoyed cruise ship employee who refused to listen to the gaggle of nerds who were assuring him that William Moulton Marsden created both Wonder Woman and the lie detector. Everything else I got wrong was the result of the high-pressure (low-risk) situation.

This is why I would never want to go on Jeopardy. I was only embarrassed in front of a woman who would still choose to marry me and people who willingly go on cruises (I was there because I was asked to officiate a wedding and was told it was on a cruise after I said yes). That was eleven years ago, and I still think about it. Doing the same thing on a national stage may kill me. I’ve tried to be a contestant out of some sick need for self-flagellation but have luckily never succeeded.

Failing like that can follow you around, as former teacher’s aide Dr. Amy Fineburg barely recalls. She had to be reminded by comedian and host Roy Wood Jr. The former Daily Show funnyman recently appeared on Celebrity Jeopardy. He found the experience so stressful that he apologized on Twitter to a teacher’s assistant he had once mocked for going on College Jeopardy and losing by a dollar. He did not remember the assistant’s name but in an exchange reminiscent of Twitter days past, the assistant, now a Doctor, found him.

The back and forth is kind and pretty spectacular. Roy Wood Jr. shows some humility, and Dr. Amy Fineburg isn’t sweating a bunch of bratty middle schoolers because she turned out OK. It’s the kind of thing social media and even Twitter can be good for despite being a gathering place for some of the worst people imaginable who often throw their manners and humanity aside — like cruise ships.