The Interview

As she talked I could feel her breath burning every hair in my nostrils. It's amazing how far you can stand away from someone and still smell the liquor marinating through her lack of teeth. She'd obviously indulged her self with a Friday afternoon cocktail. It was about 4:30, the start of the weekend, why not?

I looked around. This neighborhood was a pretty dilapidated, but not in as bad shape as most of the neighborhoods you end up in when the police find dead bodies. Most of the homes actually had people living in them, instead of decorated with plywood sealing the decaying inside off from the rest of the world. I only saw one liquor bottle in the open lot we walked across, which is always a sign.

Everyone was outside their homes, sitting on their front or back porches. It's usually next to impossible to get anyone to even make eye contact with us, let alone talk to us, but the second our live truck rolled up to the sidewalk someone ran up to us to show us where police found the body. Everyone had something to say about this body, but of course, no one wanted to say it on camera.

That's when she walked up. She looked like she had been run over at one point in her life. she was about 5 foot 7, rail thin and had the mouth of a baby (who just started teething). She was completely willing to talk about the body and the neighborhood. Maybe it was the booze talking, but it was a good soundbite. She was so excited for her 20 seconds of fame.

Too bad we got pulled off the story.

The Lead In

This week I had to drive through "My First Market"© the spot I launched my cosmic journalism journey, and it got me reminiscing.

It all started about 6 years ago. TV is broken up into markets. New York is number 1, Los Angeles is Number 2, St. Louis is 20, Glendive Montana is market 210. I started in a market closer to the size of Glendive.

I moved out to "My First Market"© on a Friday night. My ex-girlfriend helped me move out there. She packed up her monstrous SUV with my mattress, and everything my dorm room from college could hold (I followed behind in my small hatchback), and we headed out toward the East Coast. I'm not talking about big city east coast, I'm talking about cornfields. Lots of corn fields.

About an hour into the 3 hour drive, we drove by Dairy Queen. There was a line of people wrapped around the corner. It looked like everyone in town was at the Dairy Queen. That's when I got that sinking feeling. This is what my Friday nights are going to be like for the next two years. Dairy Queen.

Luckily it was not that bad... some nights it felt close, but not that bad.

The Tease....

I started to feel it deep in my stomach. It started as a small twisting feeling. An icy, cold stomach ache, like all the acids in my belly quickly froze and burned at the same time. The feeling crept up towards my lungs, and I could feel each breath get shorter and shorter. I could feel my heart pounding like a door knocker against my rib cage. All my muscles started to tense up. I tried and tried and tried to stay calm.

I could hear the news programing through my earpiece (AKA my IFB). I don't remember exactly what they were talking about, and I don't remember exactly what I was supposed to talk about, but I still remember exactly how my nerves were completely unraveling. This was live television. I was out in the thick of it, doing exactly what I wanted to do, ready to talk to the camera in front of any given crime scene and bring the power of what I was witnessing home to the audience. I had done it few times before, but I was no where near calling myself experienced. I was in a new state, with a new boss, at a new television station, with new responsibilities and new expectations. I could feel the sweat drip down the back of my poorly ironed, shapeless dress shirt.

I didn't have much to say, not enough for the time to fill, and that twisted my stomach into a full saltwater taffy twist. I looked at the photographer stationed behind the safety of about a thousand watts of manufactured sunshine, watched the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, then glanced down at the lack of bullet points scrawled across my slim reporter's notepad.

That's when I heard the TV news anchor, stationed in the cool, quiet safety of the studio say my name...

I crashed... I burned... but it wasn't bad enough for them to fire me on the spot. I still get those feelings occasionally, never to the same extent, even when I started my new freelance job, but when I do I've learned how to use it.