My first encounter with a parent

I've told this story before, but we got an e-mail once that argued the local youth team actually worked harder than the local D-I because the youth team practiced six days a week and played on the seventh, while the college guys got a day off.
We are still laughing about that one.

 

Then tell her to piss up a rope.

 

It's funny when you realize people are the cliche. They don't think they're the cliche, of course, which makes it even better. I'll never forget the first time I had a lineman's father give me the "you never write about the line" sob story. I laughed at him, couldn't help it, because we just had a thread on that a few days before.

 

Great use of the word/phrase as a verb. The Upper Decker? Nice. Upper-deck her? Even better.

 

I respond by telling 'em, "I work just as hard as Jay Mariotti, but the Sun-Times doesn't publish my work. When it does, my first story will be about how hard your son works."

 

The other day, a mom came in wondering why we don't have coverage of the swim team. On a hunch, I said, "Easy. We hate them." What a RUSH! And she laughed, to my immense relief. Then we had a civil conversation.

I swear to God, this was not a dream.

 

Every time I have had a live interaction with a parent, it has always been 99.95% positive. The other 0.05% was jealousy over covering another town's team through the playoffs to the state finals.

I joke about it too, but that covering-JV crap is just that. At least at my shop. But then again, this is TEXAS, where if your kid isn't good enough for varsity by their junior year, you're looking into gene therapy.

 

I want to register a formal complaint with the starter of this thread.
By reading the title, I thought this was going to be some sort of entry in the world of Penthouse Letters - the MILF and Cougar edition.
Maybe even an "Risky Business" kind of story. Not crap about a parent wanting, sigh, more JV coverage.

Carry on.

 

Orville, I hadn't thought that. And I am so ashamed.

 

I'll echo the thought about how cliche some people are... I'm pretty new in the business as well, and read with horror some of these parent threads... I've slowly experienced many of the conversations in person and every time, i can't help but laugh.

 

Can she be on MILF Island?

 

When I was stringing, I mistakenly gave out my cell phone number to a parent of a youth figure skater who I was writing a feature on.

That was a mistake. Every couple of days -- "Hi, I was just calling because I needed to add XX," "Hi, what papers is this article appear in," "Hi, you're not going to mention XX, are you?"

All of this after the article was actually published. At least she was nice about it though.