My Journey Into the Land of Oprah

By Lauren

I don’t know if I should be embarrassed to say this, but I have a confession to make:

I love Oprah.

Like, love. Idolize, even. I think she is a phenomenal role model for women, has the best topics on her show and wears the absolutely most amazing earrings. And I would give anything (anything!) to spend one day in her shoe closet.

And yesterday, I got to go to her show!

It was like a dream come true. I have been trying to get tickets for years and, finally, my lucky day came. I didn’t know who was going to be on the show and I didn’t care; I just wanted to be in the same room as Queen Oprah. And I was!

Since Oprah tapes in Chicago, my mother and I decided to make a little mother/daughter trip out of it. We flew into Chicago early Monday morning, spent the day shopping (which, by the way, sucked because my mom was all about buying me things and we couldn’t find anything! Could there be a worse situation?), ate a deeelicious dinner and then tucked in early to get our mandatory beauty rest. After all, we would be seeing Oprah herself the next morning, not to mention the 30 million people who might see us.

And before we knew it (literally, as we had to wake up at 5 AM) the time had come: we were headed to Oprah. If I wasn’t so tired I probably would have been jumping in my seat, but the Molton Lava cake from dinner was still in my system and I hadn’t quite woken up from the food coma.

That all went away, though, when Oprah walked into the studio. I jumped up. I screamed. I sobbed (seriously, I know). I wanted to reach out and touch her, but I was afraid of the large security guys strategically placed around the studio. A very small studio, in fact. Actually, everything there was a lot smaller than it seems on TV. The stage, the couch (that tiny Tom Cruise jumped on), the audience. Even Oprah seemed teeny in person.

If only they let me hold onto my camera!

Oprah was also so natural and real in person. She treated everyone with such respect, listened attentively to her guests and even joked around with the audience. Clearly, I fell even more in love with her (and it had nothing to do with her shoes). Before I knew it, the taping was over.

The whole thing was like a dream. And when I woke up, I wiped my runny eye makeup I made a much needed run for some Starbucks.