One of the weirdest turn of events that happened to us on our recent trip to Prince Edward Island was when my wife and I ended up in a TV commercial for the Atlantic Canada Lottery.
After driving all day on Saturday, as the teenagers slept in, my wife and I headed out to the grocery store for provisions. It was a rainy Sunday and unfortunately we found all the grocery stores closed until noon.
We could either drive all the way back to the cottage or figure out a way to kill time. I’m always up for second breakfasts, so we doubled back to this cute retro diner that I spotted on the way.
Lo and behold we enter the diner and there is this film crew spread out all over the place. We sit down and wait for about 15 minutes watching the crew milling around. Finally I get up and ask if we can get some service – some coffee and some menus. There was no communication between the staff and us and we were starting to get rather grumpy!
We ordered breakfast and watch as film crew starts to step up some scenes where a waitress serves a customer some pie. It was rather fascinating as they had the camera guy set up with a steady cam and a remote focus puller. I was trying to figure out all of the various roles of the crew.
Just when we were finishing breakfast, the director came over and asked if we would like to be in the commercial. He explained his concept to us and offered us $100 to just pretend to be a customer and have a slice of pie served to us. Hey, I’m not one to turn down some easy money plus it seemed like a lot of fun.
So we ended up hanging around the diner a lot longer than expected (and drank a lot more coffee than we probably should have) but ended up with $100 in the pocket, free breakfast and a story to talk about.
You can spot me at .25 – .30 and our hands. I ended up with the 7 cent slice and my wife got the 12 cent slice. But I ended up eating most of it. Not a bad pumpkin pie.