Now that my days are pretty much plumb full--what with trying only semi-successfully to keep the Riles from shoving his morning cereal into the baby's mouth--I've had to quit my part-time, work-from-home job.You see, I am a freelance reporter. Er, was. And truth be told, I kind of miss it. (Except for the hair-pulling stress fest that happened every week because I procrastinated and had to scramble like a madwoman to meet my final deadline.) A part of me liked being able to identify myself as a working girl. When someone asked if I had a job, I liked being able to say, "I'm a correspondent for a newspaper back in Utah."
It sounded impressive enough, as long as no one asked any questions. But unfortunately, people usually did ask questions, and I either had to answer them or stare at their face for awhile and then run away. When I did answer them, the convo usually went something like this:
Q: How big is the newspaper you write for?
A: Well, we cover a middle-of-nowhere area with a handful of small towns whose population combined still wouldn't equal that of a semi-respectable metropolis.
Q: How many people read your stories?
A: Four. An editor, my mom, grandma, and on extremely special occasions, my husband.
Q: What kind of stories do you write?
A: If it's something contained in the annals of small towndem, I've covered it. Beauty pageants, county commission meetings, features on Farmer Joe Jr. winning the 4-H competition. All very exciting stuff.
And even though I never reached the Wall-Street-Journal employment status that I envisioned when I decided to be a journalist, I've still had my fair share of rewarding experiences as a small-town reporter. Those aren't very fun to talk about though, so I'll share my most shameful moments in journalism instead.
Goats Gone Wild and Other Unknowns
I still remember the first story I was assigned to write professionally. I was home from college for the summer feeling like hot stuff because I had, like, one entire journalism class under my belt. I strutted into the newspaper office that day wearing my only pair of shoes with a heel on them (Yep, it's true. I had no style. Note to self: You were supposed to work on that).
I was expecting the editor to hand me some terribly exciting crime story. Instead, I was instructed to drive to Ballard and meet Mabel something-or-the-other out in her cow pasture. You see, Mabel's goat had just given birth to quadruplets (or maybe it was quintuplets...I forget which). I was given the oh-so-important task of getting a picture.
So, I made the drive and started trekking through Mabel's muddy field in my only pair of heels. Now, at this point, you're probably asking yourself, "Self, I've never photographed goats before. I wonder if they're cooperative subjects." Let me just clear that up for you. No. No they are not.
I herded those stupid goats around that field for an hour while they ran from me and Mabel laughed. But this was my first assignment, darn it, and I was not going to mess it up. I think the end result was a picture of one of the goats looking at me and the rest of them mooning the camera.
Later that summer, I was also assigned to write a story about a dark, new trend among male teenage athletes. You see, groups of them were, ahem, shaving their legs. I had to immerse myself in this world of teen angst to get the real story.
Why were they doing this? What was their motivation?
I don't have the article in front of me for reference and, surprise surprise, it apparently wasn't deemed worthy enough to make the online archives. But, to the best of my recollection, these are some of the shocking answers I helped reveal to the world.
"Because it feels, like, so totally smooth when I climb into bed at night."
"It helped me shave like 1/980,000 thousandth of a second off my swim time."
On the plus side, at least I have a couple of stories I can add to my resume when I do decide to seek employment at the Wall Street Journal.
