Editor's note: Molly Ball has covered politics for the Review-Journal since February 2006.

Being a contestant on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" was almost a nightmare.

I left the studio in tears, an explosive mess of anger and frustration and disbelief. I stormed out of the back door of the ABC offices on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, sobbing and stomping down the block until I was almost out of breath.

Halfway around the block I met my fiance, Dave, and collapsed into his arms.

"This is so unfair!" I wailed.

Dave has had a lot of practice calming me down from fits of pique or worse. "It's OK, baby," he murmured. "You'll come back tomorrow, and you'll do great."

And then he left, and I was all alone.

I had gotten the call three weeks earlier, in September of last year, to fly to New York City and be on the syndicated game show hosted by Meredith Vieira.

In my little paper-walled apartment in Henderson, there was much yelping when that phone call came, which scared the cats.

I hugged Dave and immediately called Jason, a good friend from college. I left some more yelps on his voice mail.

It was Jason who first encouraged me to try out for "Millionaire." A regular on the New York competitive trivia circuit, he had heard the show was holding auditions in Las Vegas.

"You should go," he said in an e-mail.

I took a half-day off work and waited with hundreds of others in a snaking line that filled a ballroom at the Tuscany. A couple hundred people at a time would go in and take a multiple-choice test.

Those who didn't pass went home. Those who passed had their numbers called out and went into another room, where they -- we -- got Polaroids taken and were interviewed by show producers.

The interview couldn't have been more than a minute and a half, terrifyingly short. There was so much I wanted to say, so many ways I could have impressed the producer.

I could have told him about the quirky, television-free childhood in Boise and Denver! The time I moved to New York with $20 and a suitcase and worked as a waitress and a secretary! The move to Cambodia after college, where I found all-American true love! The battle with cancer! The glamorous career in journalism!

I don't think I got any of that in.

And yet, through some colossal mistake in judgment no doubt, they decided I was TV-worthy. I got a postcard in the mail telling me I was in the "contestant pool." And then I got The Call.

When I am not busy knowing the capitals of countries, historical batting averages and fun facts about presidential mistresses, I am a reporter who covers politics. Both occupations play to my strong suit, which is Being Right About Everything.

But my day job gets very, very busy in the autumn of even-numbered years, and taking three days off in October was not convenient. Fortunately, my editors here at the R-J were understanding.

"I have to go to New York for three days in October," I said. "Are you going to fire me?"

I did, and they didn't.

So I flew to New York on a Wednesday for my taping on Thursday and gave myself the weekend to spend with friends there, flying out on Sunday.

But my fiance, R-J police reporter David Kihara, could only get one day off. He took a red-eye flight Wednesday night, arrived in New York Thursday morning, went straight to the studio to see my taping and had a flight out that evening on another red-eye.

But I didn't tape on Thursday.

I was in a contestant group of 12 people for the all-day, five-show taping. Yes, when Meredith tells a contestant to come back "the next day," she is telling a tiny fib. She really means "run upstairs and change."

The contestants' order on the shows is picked at random and not in advance. We sat in a green room backstage, watching the taping on a monitor, not allowed any contact with phones or reading material or anything but each other and the show's staffers, and each other was a constantly dwindling pool.

Taping finished at 5 p.m. and there were still four of us left who would have to come back the next day.

That's when I ran out crying.

And after Dave hugged me and told me everything was going to be fine, he got in a cab to go back to the airport.

But I met a friend for dinner and after the second glass of scotch and the third course of the tasting menu I was feeling substantially calmer.

Like so many of my life's detours, including cancer and Cambodia, it was a blessing in disguise.

The next day I was rested and relaxed. I went on the show, changed outfits, went on the show again and walked offstage with no regrets. I'd given it my best and I hadn't done anything too stupid.

Oh, I'd also won $100,000.

I can't really tell you what it was like to be there. It's a blur in my memory. Seeing it on TV 3 1/2 months later, it was almost as new to me as it was to the national TV audience.

How did I do it? Well, I watch the show regularly and I never go to the Strip if I can help it. Meaning my strategy, on the show and with money generally, was not to take any risks.

Beyond that, I just got lucky. A lot of the questions were things that I knew or could figure out, and all of my lifelines -- the ask-the-audience, phone-a-friend, 50-50 and switch-the-question features you can use if you don't know the answer -- were useful at key points.

Please do not come up to me and tell me how dumb I am for not having known the force of gravity on the moon or the characters in the Fantastic Four. To you I say: Can you sing the French national anthem, nerd?

To answer some frequently asked questions, I don't have the money yet; I'm supposed to get it in about a month.

I will have to pay taxes on it that will probably amount to about $40,000, unless the Democrats now in power in Washington start looking at my tax bracket and licking their chops.

I will save most of it, spending some on our wedding this August in Denver and finally paying off my college debt. Dave and I will continue to live like students in our little paper-walled apartment in Henderson, to drive 5- and 10-year-old cars and to drink $2 beer at Champagne's. The cats will still eat dry food.

And no, you may not have a loan. This means you, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. I don't care how much you like the line on the Super Bowl.

("It's not unethical if I pay you back," Goodman said during a recent interview on another topic. Seriously.)

Answering the questions wasn't the hard part. The hard part was keeping the outcome a secret for so long. Dave knew. Jason, who'd been my phone-a-friend on the show and answered the $100,000 question, knew.

My best friend, Lee, who'd flown all the way from San Francisco to watch the taping and was promoted to on-air companion when Dave couldn't be there, knew.

My friends who were putting me up in New York knew. And I told a guy I met on a plane to London and hit it off with, but when I e-mailed him later, it turned out he'd been too drunk to remember.

I didn't tell my parents or my brother or anyone else, though. I didn't tell my co-workers or my friends or all the sources I gossip with every day.

They know they can trust me with sensitive information. But my own secrets are a different story. It was torture.

The show finally aired last weekend. Two episodes, Thursday and Friday. The weird part started Thursday night, after the first show I was on.

I didn't like the way I looked on TV -- the camera had apparently added 10 pounds directly to my chin -- but others did.

Due to the magic of the Internet, these people were able to Google my name, find my work e-mail address or my MySpace page, and send me creepy messages.

One guy attached his resume and asked, "Do you go for handicapped guys?"

A woman found my phone number at my desk and left me a voice mail straight out of "Poltergeist": "We watched you on Millionaire," she intoned, slowly, anonymously. "Weeee waaaatched yoooooou." Click.

On Friday night, I threw a party at my local watering hole, Lucky Joe's Saloon in Henderson. They let me unplug the jukebox and put the show on the big screen; in return, I kept an open tab and encouraged everyone who showed up to drink on it.

The crowd included a few prominent elected officials and lobbyists, a lot of scruffy journalist types, and my disreputable punk-rock friends.

But if you are reading this or have ever met me, you probably know that I do not much mind being the center of attention. There I was, in person and on two giant screens, not making too much of a fool of myself, although I did make a lot of funny faces and my chin was still too big.

When I chose to walk off with $100,000 rather than guess at the $250,000 question -- saying something to the effect of "What am I, crazy?" and thus, I'm sure, dismaying the gaming lobby -- everyone cheered.

I struck a pose in front of the crowd at the bar and then ran back to where Dave was standing, looking amusedly at this absurd, showoffy know-it-all he'd picked up in a foreign country who'd turned out to be such a good investment.

I gave him a big hug and a kiss. This time, he didn't try to calm me down.