You know, these things shouldn’t come as a surprise anymore. All one has to do is look in the mirror to get a clue, yet, the way things have always worked in the past gives one hope. I guess.
Out and about, getting a crappy sub from Subway because I’m much to lazy/uninspired/not willing to deal with gaggles of jarheads to go to a local indie shop for my sandwich fix. Coming back, there is a pretty ugly accident at the local hangout, aka the BP station with a McDonald’s inside. A motorcycle vs. SUV as I have so named them after seeing so many of the damn things going all the way back to my Arizona days when I lived with three cyclists -- one of which seemed to make a living at getting hit by motorists and living off the settlements, because, “the car is always at fault” he said.
Anyway, I’d noticed before leaving the office that the cute reporter named for an emotional state of being -- Hope -- was the reporter for the weekend. I still shudder at the thought of one reporter working in an office on weekends. Even I remember the days when a reporter never really had a “day off.” Instead, they’d work from home when the news happened.
“Hell, we publish 365 days a year,” a man I respect a little more every day told me when I was a young cub reporter. Hell, I wasn’t even a reporter, I was a skinny, long-haired, wide-eyed lost person who stumbled into a weeklong tag-along with a couple of real reporters. I was 21 at the time. They were in their late-20s or early-30s. The man, he was in his sixties. Last I heard, he was still writing his clunky, but always correct prose. Most likely scaring the crap out of what passes for journalists today, and hopefully inspiring some other young fool to follow in his footsteps.
“And that means we work 365 days a year.”
He also drank a lot. And was divorced twice.
I drink a lot. Haven’t been lucky enough to be divorced twice. Let alone married once.
Hope, she’s a cute lass, as the old guy would’ve called her. She wasn’t a very good reporter. I’d read her copy. Heard her weak excuses for not having things in them. I think she wants to be a good journalist, but if you don’t have any mentoring you, there is really little hope. (Ugh.)
Anyway, again. My time at the paper has been kind of strange. Pushed aside from the beginning, I just carved out a niche as the broody, quiet guy over in the corner. However, in the last few weeks I’ve kind of come out of that shell. It’s my usual pattern. I make a couple of friends, become kind of a dominant part of the discussions in the newsroom while we’re in the place, but not really branch out. Then, one day, the branching begins and before you know it, you’re talking to everyone all of the sudden. Usually, this leads to going out and drinking with, etc. It has not this time. It’s led to curious looks and smiles, mostly.
After doing a bit of manuevering to take a look at the crash, it looked somewhat awful. The motorcyclist was being attended to by three medics and there were two ambulances there, a fire truck there and a couple of cops. As I drove down the road, a third ambulance was en route.
I got to the office, walked over toward the cute reporter. Her cubicle was a bit of a maze to get to. Just as I enter, my boss yells out my name. Awkwardness. She sees me right behind her, holding food and looking dumb. I look at her, then at my boss. I start to walk towards him.
“Huh?”
“Can you take that story again?”
“Um. Yeah. Sure.”
“Sorry, bro.”
“Not a problem.” I had suggested taking a story on a kid who got paralyzed in a football game from him to put on the sports pages due to lack of space. He agreed. We set it up. Then he took it back.
“Unless the obits run long,” he said.
And now, two hours before deadline, two hours after obit deadline, he has decided obits ran long.
Eh, whatever.
I turn back to the reporter. She’s back at looking on the internet. A favorite pastime of journalists now. Especially those under the age of 30.
“Hope,” I meekly say.
She turns and smiles, then says “Yes sir?”
Taken aback a little by this, I stutter out “I saw something…might make a story.”
I then explain the wreck, clumsily. I’m still thinking about being called “sir.”
She asks me how bad it was.
“Looked not that awful,” I reply. “There were three ambulances.”
“Ok,” she said, turning back to the internet.
I walk away. Feeling sorry for myself.
I am old, I guess. At least to a girl who graduated from college in 2008.
I think about asking her about David Bowie, since I'd been jamming to what the old folks would have poo-pooed on the ride to work "China Girl" and on the way home "Suffragette City."
I think better of it rather quickly.
Me and my boss start talking about “remember the days when…”, further solidifying our own demise.
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