Jared Rosenthal - Swab Stories: The Morning After

I was originally against it, then I was reluctant, then I got into it. And then: we filmed Swab Stories, they edited it down, I taped some narrations, and then ... I waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, I just put it out of my mind and went back to running Health Street without thinking about the TV show.

Patience was never my strong suit, but man, nearly three years of envisioning how this thing would turn out is a long time by anybody's standards. I had never planned on making a TV show, but after we filmed the stories last year, the show seeped into my dreams. It started to seem it would remain there forever.

About three weeks ago, I got a call from Seanbaker Carter, the executive producer of the show. VH1 found a slot. Wednesdays, starting April 29, at 9/8c. Boom. It's been a whirlwind ever since. Ads started running, twitter blew up, text messages started coming in from long lost friends...

Yesterday, I picked up Baker for an afternoon ride in the RV. I thought more people would have been connecting the dots between the promos on VH1, and the Who's Your Daddy truck they saw me driving, but until yesterday, nobody had approached me to say that they heard of the show. I wondered if anyone at all was going to watch the premiere. As we were headed down Lexington Ave, thinking about what might happen and planning a celebratory drink for the debut, I heard someone screaming my name. Jared! Jared Rosenthal!

I got recognized, I thought. Wow! This is pretty cool! I turned to look, and there on the corner, in the middle of a crowd, was my daughter, Sophie, just out of middle school for the day and about to jump on the subway, screaming my name. "Can I get a ride downtown, dad?" Hop in. We drove her to friend's place.

At 9 PM, me and Baker sat at a bar and toasted the world premiere of Swab Stories. It's just a TV show. But it's a TV show. I guess you can say, as of last night, the dream finally turned into reality - or at least into reality TV! At 9:30 I got more simultaneous texts than I ever got in my life. It was fun. I somehow brought together all of the important people in my life from my past and present, who were all over the USA, for 30 minutes. They were all together even if they didn't know it, and they were all in front of their respective TV sets to watch Swab Stories. I didn't realize how cool that would be.

I woke up this morning at 5 AM and did what I always do. I went to the gym. Only this time, the receptionist told me that she cried watching Swab Stories last night. I dropped off my kids at school, only this time, my daughter's friends surrounded me, asking if they could be in an episode of Swab. I went to Starbucks for coffee, only this time, the barista wrote "Who's Your Daddy" on my cup.