I flew on a redeye from Honolulu to L.A. on September 3, 2001, spent the next day trying to recover from jet lag, and joined the group in the Culver City Radisson lobby at 7:30 a.m. L.A. on September 5, though by my body clock, it was 4:30. I felt like I was sleepwalking, and that feeling intensified at the studio. Pretty soon, I thought, I will wake up. Even today, if it weren’t for the pictures, money, videotapes, and other objective evidence that I was a contestant, I could probably convince myself that I dreamed the whole thing.

Once in the Green Room, we learned the dollar amounts had just been doubled. We also met the returning champ, Frank Stasio, who had just set the record for one-day earnings ($30,000). He was calm and collected, and he scared the daylights out of me. I pleaded with the universe, "Just do not make me go first!" The universe chose to ignore me; mine was the first name Maggie called. Through my jet-lagged haze, I struggled to recall the sports-psych focusing techniques I’d used successfully in high-speed typing and court reporting competitions. The real person you’re competing against is yourself. Your opponents are not the real competition; they’re simply the impetus for you to push yourself to the next level of excellence. Hey, this had worked for me before. So I refused to let Frank psyche me out.

First category, first board: "Bill Shakespeare, P.I." Frank buzzed in first on the $200, but I nailed "Othello" on $400, called $600, and got that Daily Double noise. "Oh God," I thought, "I knew I was going to miss a Shakespeare Daily Double, but already?" I mean, at this point I had been playing Jeopardy for something like 45 seconds and already I was living out my premonition. My mind went so blank that I forgot all about Richard III, stupidly answered "Macbeth," and went $200 into the hole. The next clue was "What is Macbeth," so I bounced back quickly, happy to have gotten that part over with since I knew it was gonna happen sometime. How much of it was self-sabotage? Judging by subsequent events, probably a lot. This is a problem that would haunt me continually.

I did land on the other DD’s in that game; I missed both of them both too. This set me up for a long pattern–I swear I cannot think when I land on Daily Doubles, even when they are easy (though I always seem to know the other contestants’ DD’s, even when they are hard). I wish I would have remembered this annoying tendency of mine later. Something about the knowledge that "everyone is looking at me" sends my brain into freeze frame.

So, I lost a bunch of money on DD’s, but I was still leading after DJ. I had to restrain myself from letting out a whoop when I saw the FJ "answer"–"What is Lake Wobegon?" I grew up in the Scandinavian quarter of Seattle (nicknamed "Snoose Junction"), where Norwegians, Danes and Swedes from various Lutheran synods argue over minor points of religious doctrine and everyone has relatives in North Dakota and Minnesota. So Garrison Keillor resonates with me on a deep level, and if ever a question was designed for me personally, that was it. This was one of those rare times where everything in the universe seemed to join in a brief moment of harmonic convergence. (Well, from my perspective, anyway; probably not from Frank’s.) My winning total was low-ish, though ($12,000 some), because of those lost DD’s. This would come back to haunt me later. Flaws aside, though, nothing quite compares to the feeling I had when I realized the game was mine–not even winning the subsequent games. The only thing in my life that’s trumped that moment so far is childbirth, and at least Jeopardy didn’t hurt.

For the next three games, I worked to stay focus and have fun. I refused to let negative thinking get the better of me, even when I was falling behind. Game #2 was particularly challenging because I got the boards of my dreams, but my two opponents shared similar strengths and were both fierce on the buzzer–terrific people as well. Man, it is so frustrating to know something with certainty and not be able to get in there! By maintaining my focus, however, I managed to pull off a lot of hat tricks. Somehow I emerged with the lead after DJ in every game.

But Game #3 FJ had long-range implications. I wound up with a narrow lead and had to bet the farm on FJ, and I missed. "This person, born in 1783, is a hero in five countries." Something about the 1783 date sent my mind toward Europe, I got in a rut and couldn’t get out. Fortunately my opponents were apparently educated in the same Eurocentric mode as myself, because they did the same thing. As soon as Alex said, "You’re all on the wrong continent," I mouthed "Bolivar" and he nodded back at me. Duh! I took a lot of heat for that one from two of my closest friends, who teach Latin American studies. This left me with only $2,000–another stumble that would haunt me later–but it was enough to win.

In game #4 I experienced another one of those "questions you are supposed to know but don’t" moments when Literary Crossword Clues asked for the name of Lady Chatterley’s lover. I had recently passed a doctoral exam in 20th century British literature and this book was on my reading list, so supposedly I’m an expert in this field. Yet somehow the lover’s name would not pop into my head–all I could see when that clue popped up was the faces of the two professors who examined me. I found out later that my worst nightmare did play out; both profs happened to be watching that night, and I learned later that both of them had mentioned to colleagues later, "Why she didn’t know that!" I’d tried to keep my Jeopardy appearance a secret from my former professors, and I thought that would be easy because the show airs in the afternoon in Hawaii, but somebody found out and emailed the entire UH English Department and the secretaries smuggled a TV into the department office. The lesson if you want to remain anonymous and you want to keep your mental lapses a secret, you don’t go on Jeopardy in the first place.

(Later I devised an elaborate intellectual defense along the lines that his name, Mellors, was not what Lady Chatterley’s lover was most famous for anyway; that Lawrence had minimized the importance of his name on purpose to emphasize the class differences between him and Chatterley; and therefore your reading of the novel is more intellectually sound if you don’t remember Mellors’ name, which I of course will now remember for the rest of my damn life.)

At the end of Game #4, I was in a similar situation–narrow lead, bet the farm. This time, FJ ("What is Yahoo?") popped into my mind just before the tympani banged, and I scrawled it out hastily, just in the nick of time. Suddenly I realized I was on the verge of entering that elite class of Champions. Not only was I elated, but my adrenalin shot to never-before-experienced levels. It occurred to me later that I should have asked my doctor for beta blockers, because I was just a wreck during game #5. I was also exhausted. We’d had a lot of glitches all day with a new camera system; it was now past 6:00 p.m. and I’d been playing since noon (without access to my breast pump, which is probably more about me than you needed to know, but I need all the excuses I can get for what happens next.)

I let my nerves get the better of me, mostly because I forgot my mantra to "have fun." As soon as I started "trying," I stumbled. The first question of the game, my opponent beat me to the punch on "People in this state use the nut of the kukui tree to make leis." Okay, you don’t have to have lived in Hawaii for ten years as I did to figure that one out, but give me a break, that’s my state! This was the first game all day in which I "got to pick first in Double Jeopardy," but during the break I was able to regain enough composure to stage a dramatic comeback. Then I had yet another "moment"–I caused my mother to roll over in her grave by missing a Bible question–and I somehow at the very moment I blurted out "Ruth," I remembered that the Feast of Purim is in Esther. Um, brain, could you please work just a little bit faster? I also couldn’t remember the name of Petrarch, the father of the sonnet–I had tip of the tongue phenomenon and could only think of "Patriarch." And once again, that darn DD brain-freeze phenomenon caught me; I missed a DD so easy that I’m still embarrassed, and that left me a few hundred short of the lock. So close, but not there. This meant I would need to get FJ right–or hope my opponents didn’t–in order to win the car and a Tourney slot.

Prior to FJ, Glenn showed me where to go stand after I won; Susanne gave me a bunch of car pictures and told me to choose one (that was in pre-Jag days). So all the pieces were in place for my big moment. I was stoked when I saw the category, "Countries of the World"–geography is one of "my" things–and when the "answer" appeared, I thought it would be easy. "This is the world’s only Hindu kingdom." My dad was from India, and my other doctoral field is South Asian fiction. Yet somehow I couldn’t seem to come up with a Hindu kingdom. I wrote "India,"then realized it is a secular republic and scrawled it out. I mean, at this point I am so nervous that I’m even forgetting the details of my own ethnic heritage. I got stuck on the idea that everything north of India is Muslim while everything east of India is Buddhist. There was this little voice in my head telling me, "You are forgetting something obvious," but that voice was not articulate enough to tell me exactly what I was forgetting. In my panic I scribbled "Sri Lanka," knowing it’s also a republic, but nothing else came to mind.

The minute Alex read my competitor Jaclyn’s answer, "Nepal," I wanted to melt. Not only is South Asia supposed to be one of my fields of expertise, and not only is my dad’s family from the next country over, but I had recently attended the dissertation defense of a Nepalese grad school friend. (See why I wanted to keep my appearance secret from my professors?) Plus, earlier that summer I had captioned the news story of the murder of Nepal’s royal family. I’ve still never really lived that one down. This time it was my dad I sent rolling in his grave–at least I am an equal opportunity airhead. It’s weird that every single thing I worried might happen, ended up happening; I missed stuff in my field, missed Shakespeare, missed a Bible question, and missed a geography question.

I was now unlikely to make the tournament due to three major screwups: (1) Game 3 FJ, which would have upped my total by $13,000 and increased the likelihood of a wild card; (2) Game 5 DD, which would have locked my game; (3) Game 5 FJ. All of them were easy, and all of them were things I "knew," yet didn’t know. One thing Jeopardy has taught me is that, like ogres and onions, knowledge has layers. (That last sentence will only make sense to Shrek fans.) There’s the stuff at the surface that is pretty much there no matter how bad your nerves get. Then there’s stuff buried deeper; you know it but you need more time to think, and there often isn’t time. Once in awhile you get lucky and dredge up something from way down deep, not knowing how you did it. Then there’s the stuff that just plain isn’t in your head anywhere at all. In a way, that’s easier to deal with.

Back at the hotel, I called my husband on his cell phone and shared the (mostly) good news. At first he thought I was b-s-ing him, then he realized that wasn’t really my style and he let out a huge whoop. I worked off a bit of stress on the exercise equipment, then I ran into a bunch of fellow contestants in the lobby and we all grabbed a cab to Venice Beach for dinner (and yes, I picked up the tab). I didn’t quite know how to feel–elated, or disappointed at missing the tournament after coming so close–but I knew for sure everyone else there would have traded places with me in a New York minute, so I didn’t dwell on my failures and I just drank in the good feelings, wondered if this was really my life I was living. Nothing will ever match that night, I don’t think.