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KATHLEEN SLECKMAN - Rookie

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georgiapeach:
Another one:

'Survivor' quitter still feels pain
TELEVISION | 'Mother Nature kicked my behind,' Glen Ellyn woman says of 19 rainy days

March 21, 2008Recommend (13)

BY MISHA DAVENPORT mdavenport@suntimes.com
Take it from former "Survivor: Micronesia" contestant Kathleen Sleckman: Things you see on TV are not the same as real life.

"Everything always looks so much easier when you're sitting at home with a roof over your head and a cold beer in your hand," she says.

The golf-course vendor from Glen Ellyn quit "Survivor: Micronesia" in Wednesday's episode rather than be voted off, and she doesn't regret her decision.

"The three happiest moments of my life have been the birth of my child, my marriage to my husband and getting on that damn boat" off the island.

There as part of a team of longtime "Survivor" fans, she says nothing she saw in the 16 prior seasons could have prepared her for the nightmare she encountered.

"Mother Nature really kicked my behind," she says. "There wasn't a single day during the 19 days I was there where I was dry. And on the day I decided to quit, I hadn't had much to eat other than raw oysters and I spent the night in a urine-soaked cave."

No wonder she likens her "Survivor" experience, on an island off Palau, to being a P.O.W.

"I take back everything bad I ever said about any 'Survivor' contestant who cried on the show," says Sleckman, 45. "This game is tough."

Things were bad from the minute she stepped on the boat bound for the island. Sleckman was one of three contestants in the Airai tribe who was over 40.

"The seven others clicked and immediately began to discuss which one of the three of us would be going home first," she says.

Sleckman was ostracized by her teammates, along with Chet Welch and Tracy Hughes-Wolf.

"I should have been more thickskinned, but we were shunned like lepers and I didn't understand why, she says. "I haven't had to deal with that since high school. That part really sucked."

Sleckman credits Hughes-Wolf for helping her last as long as she did: "That girl knew how to play the game and worked it. The three of us held hands in our shelter and formed a three-way voting bloc, and it worked for a while."

She remains friends with both Hughes-Wolf and Welch. But fellow Airai member Jason Siska of Fox River Grove was her least favorite person on the show.

"If I was playing shortstop and trying to throw out a runner at first base, Jason would have folded his arms, refused to catch the ball and then blamed me for not making the out," she says.

Siska would hide the machete needed to make a shelter or to crack the coconuts that were their primary source of food.

While watching the episodes in the comfort of her home, Sleekman says she took delight when Siska fell for a fake immunity idol.

"I tell you, it's like having Christmas come twice a year for me," she says. "Is he really that stupid to think that the 'Survivor' art department isn't going to be able to come up with a better idol than what he found? Karma comes back to you. I don't think I could be enjoying this more."


http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/television/854435,CST-FTR-surv21.article

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