Posted conspicuously on the wall in the living room next to the television set is a list. A list with a lot of names.

Chosen at random after the first batch of six bachelors were dismissed on the opening episode of The Bachelorette on May 23, our viewing group of three decided the most equitable way to choose the guys we will be rooting for was to pull them out of a hat.

So in went all the names and we (my daughter, our housemate and I) took turns pulling them out one by one, with two names remaining (20 still doesn’t divide equally by three, even with common core math). We each have six guys on our list and the two left we deemed as ‘wild cards.’ The first to lose one of their chosen six will get a wild card, the second wild card going to the second person to lose an original six.

We figured the random out of the hat picking system was better, since we would all probably want some of the same guys and there are some none of us would touch with a 10-foot pole.

For those that don’t watch or haven’t heard of the phenomenon of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette (with a variety of other spinoffs including our favorite Bachelor in Paradise) it is a very public way of trying to find your true love. One lucky(?) bachelor or bachelorette gets to meet more than two dozen contestants and, one by one, whittle them down week by week until just a handful remain. The goal at the end is to have ‘the one’ there to A) Propose to if you are the bachelor or B) Be proposed to if you are the bachelorette.

Along the way there are misadventures, travels to gorgeous foreign locations, lots of dates (one on one and group), high drama, occasional hilarity, rose ceremonies and host Chris Harrison, who we know will always show up near the end of each week’s rose ceremony to announce that there is one rose remaining and some people will be going home.

As difficult as it is to imagine that anyone could fall in love in just a matter of weeks with someone that was originally a complete stranger, it’s even more surprising to think they would willingly go through the process on national television, with the world watching.

And we are watching. ‘Bachelor Nation’ is one of those terms they will probably add to the dictionary; it is such a staple of society now. Given the successful track record of such voyeur-type shows as Big Brother and Survivor, why would this be any different? It’s almost as if we want to, at some level, live vicariously through these people.

And then, of course, there are those that will tell you they only watch it to see the scenery or to laugh at the antics of some of those that get sent home way before ‘the final rose’ at the end of the season.

The show airs on Monday nights; that’s not super conducive for TV viewing in our house with our varying work schedules so we DVR it and watch it later in the week when we all can sit down together. That actually works out well; we can rewind to catch things we might have missed, zoom through commercials and watch particularly hilarious parts again.

So this season’s Bachelorette is JoJo, who was the ‘runner up’ on last season’s Bachelor. She was in the final two but Bachelor Ben proposed to Lauren instead and it wasn’t too long after that we learned JoJo would be the next Bachelorette. Pretty good consolation prize.

This year, the scuttlebutt is that the frontrunner is Jordan (younger brother of Packers QB Aaron Rodgers) and my daughter is the one that picked him out of the hat. One of my picks was Daniel, the Canadian who got highly intoxicated on the first night and stripped down to his underwear for a dip in the pool. Don’t expect him to last more than a few weeks. I also have Ali, Alex, James T., James F. and Robby. I think Robby might be my best chance of making it through to the end.

Not sure what the ‘prize’ will be for having picked the winner but we’ve got a few weeks to figure that out.

For now, we will settle in and hope our guys do right by JoJo.

Marg Jackson is editor of The Escalon Times, The Oakdale Leader and The Riverbank News. She may be reached at mjackson@oakdaleleader.com or by calling 847-3021.