Quick parent rant

Lee.

I'm going to ask my father-in-law for a job (he owns a grocery store) so I don't have to jump at the first job offer or go back to school. I should have been an architect to begin with.

 

Tide,

I had something similar happen when I was SE of a small daily. Except the crazy mother involved was one of our ad sales staff. She breezed into the newsroom one afternoon announcing that she was leaving early to attend her son's HS wrestling match and asked me when I was heading there. I said I was covering the basketball game that night (which had playoff implications) and not wrestling (which was going to be a glorified walkover over a weakassed opponent). She went and whined to her advertising VP, who called the spineless ME, who told me I had to go to watch wrestling. I explained why I made the coverage call, assured him the wrestling coach was planning to call in results, and we would catch holy hell if we skipped the basketball.

I convinced him, after some quick talking, but he said make sure we have the wrestling in the paper. Oh yeah, when the wrestlers got to district, I thoroughly enjoyed it when Mama's Boy got upset in the semifinals and didn't get to go to region.

And I updated my resume and left that spring.

 

There truly is no better feeling in sports than when the whiny-ass parent's kid loses...

 

I received a phone call from someone this morning who was angry with how I ran a picture of a girl who had won a horse jumpin' (equestrian) competition. It was a simple photo with girl on horse posing with mama and the trainer. I cut the legs off the horse to get the picture to fit in the page, and draw attention to the faces. That didn't sit well with the trainer/armchair graphic designer, who for some reason wasn't mad that in the process I managed cut his legs off too.

I offered to apologize to the horse. 8)

 

I'm not sure why, but I was always told you're not supposed to cut animals off at the legs in photos.

 

Your yoda there is whacked at the waist.

 

now that is funny.

 

I chuckled at that

 

My favorite was in Texas, when a parent called and asked if it was necessary to write "kick failed" in a football scoring summary. Since the kid can't handle that kind of criticism and all, as his coach would never say anything worse than that to him.

 

And, naturally, it turns out that your predecessor never did any of that shit. It's just some nutjob who thinks they can buffalo the new sports guy/girl. Once you have enough time to check how things were covered in the past, they shut the fuck up (after they complain, of course).

I only had this happen at about three straight papers back in the '90s. I think some of those people still hold it against me (and my successors) for not believing their bullshit.

 

Joe Stud 19 run (Johnny Jackoff kick for 0 points) 9:21

 

I don't have kids (can't afford them....uh, I work in print media, but not that I want any, anyway), but if I did, I'd have to be a jackass parent to hound the local media about printing my kid's name or not printing my kid's name if my kid fucks up.

I've never understood that, and parents that have called me all through my "career" in print media always saying the same crap: "If you have kids, or if you don't, when you do have kids, you'll understand where I'm coming from."

I've always wanted to say in response, well you know what you jackass, no. I do not understand. I do not understand how so many adults like you can be so self serving that you'd waste my time by calling me three hours before deadline and go on and on and on about your offspring and how great they are. Of course you think they're great.

I've always invited them to write a guest column or letter to the editor in these instances. Only one time do I remember a dad taking up that offer. He wrote 1,460-something words on his daughter's softball prowess that began with his girl third birthday and culminated with her leading Hometown High to the state finals as a senior pitcher.

I edited it down to about 14 inches, ran it with his mugshot on it and the dude called me to tell me I did a good job on the editing. I couldn't believe that.

A month later, I saw him at a baseball game (his son was on the ninth grade team, here we go again), and he said he knows now why not to harp on your kids' athletic ability in the local press. He said he'd taken so much crap for that "article" (they never know the difference between news and opinion, even though this dude was a doctor or lawyer or something) from his peers. He said everybody asked him how much he had to pay me to print it.

So my column a week later invited anyone to write a guest column if they wanted to, and it would be printed free of charge and that the paper never accepted money in return for a guest column.

And you all know this, but this was at a small potatoes weekly that could print guest columns of that nature.