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Acting On Impulse: Hey, it might be fun to live in Oprah's town
Photo Courtesy of Mackenzie Cates
Mackenzie Cates of Winston-Salem pokes around Chicago.
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Published: September 29, 2008
For the first 22 years of her life, Mackenzie Cates didn't think of herself as the sort of person who would do something big on impulse. She found out that she is.
Twelve hours after it first occurred to her that it might be fun to fly up to Chicago to snag a ticket to see Michael Phelps and other Olympic athletes on Oprah, there she was standing in line.
"I've never done anything like this," she said back home in Winston-Salem.
Cates grew up in Greensboro believing that it's important to contribute to the community, and, with that in mind, she majored in nonprofit management at Salem College. After graduating this past spring, she got a job with the YWCA in Winston-Salem helping the organization raise money.
When she began poking around on the Internet late on the night of Aug. 29, she had no idea that a big adventure awaited her. She was just looking for tidbits about Phelps -- she is a big fan. Her search took her to the Web site for Oprah Winfrey's show. There, she learned that, at noon the next day, tickets would be given out for the show featuring about 150 Olympic athletes that would be recorded a few days later.
The more she thought about it, the more she thought it would be fun to fly up to Chicago and see if she could get a ticket. She knows this may make her sound a little like a crazy stalker. She's not, she said. "The real pull was all the Olympians."
By 2 a.m., she had found an affordable round-trip ticket for $211, and, by 6 a.m. she was on her way to the airport. When her roommate, Makenzie Garrett, woke up, she found a note.
"She will do some little things on a whim but definitely nothing huge like this," Garrett said. "I think that's why I was surprised."
By early afternoon, Cates was standing in line at Millennium Park, where the tickets were being handed out and where the show was going to be recorded.
Cates is an outgoing person, and, as she chatted with others in line, it came out that her plane back home wasn't leaving until Sunday and she had no idea where she was going to stay that night. To her amazement, fellow line-waiter Catherine Plocher invited Cates to sleep on the couch in the apartment she shares with her husband.
Plocher said last week that although she had never gone so far as to invite someone to stay at her home before, she does like to help out people who seem like good people. Plus, she knew that such an adventure was unusual for Cates and she wanted to support that.
"I knew this was huge for her," Plocher said.
"I call her my saint," Cates said.
Cates was able to get two tickets, so she called Portia Henderson, a college friend who now lives in Durham, to invite her to go back for the recording of the show on Sept. 3. Not surprisingly, Henderson didn't guess right when Cates said, "Guess where I am right now."
When asked how she felt when she learned what Cates was up to, Henderson said, "I guess the best word is ‘flabbergasted.' "
Henderson said yes. Cates flew home on Aug. 31, found another round of tickets, and at 5:15 a.m. on Sept. 3, she was back at the park with Henderson. The next few hours consisted of waiting in a succession of lines and moving quickly from one area to another to get the best possible spot.
"Let me tell you, the Oprah fans are cutthroat," Cates said.
The better to see the Olympians as they came in, Cates wanted an aisle seat. She managed to get one, and, a little after 10 a.m., here came Phelps. He walked right by her.
"I don't really remember who was in front of Michael Phelps because he was all I saw," she said.
They didn't make eye contact, but Henderson did make eye contact with NBA MVP Kobe Bryant. After the show, Cates and Henderson poked around Chicago. They came home, and, when the show appeared the next Monday, they watched it.
Henderson is glad she took up Cates on her offer.
"It was completely worth it," she said. "It was all so quick, I still haven't absorbed that it happened."
For Cates, it feels like a life-changing experience. She now thinks that it would be fun to live in a big city. More important, the knowledge that acting on impulse can have such great results has energized her.
Since coming back, she has been doing things that she hadn't gotten around to before, such as going to a Jaycees meeting and looking into becoming a Big Sister, and she has been more likely to act on impulse.
Her roommate definitely sees the change.
"She's much more, ‘Hey, lets go do this.…' " Garrett said.
■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.
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