You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Sitting around waiting for something, anything.
In your job, you probably have a task. You probably are assigned a project. Chances are, you know what you are doing days in advance.
But I am a newsman.
I don’t know a damn thing except the clock is tick tocking along.
So I come in today and I pitch some ideas and I get that blank stare.
It’s the look of a porn producer who watches porn all day and all I’m pitching is more porn.
It’s the glazed over look of a guy who loves donuts who has just eaten a dozen and you offer him one more.
My audience is polite, but when I finish speaking, they move on.
“Well we have the downtown covered with this that and the other thing. If weather comes in, He can cover that.”
And with that, the meeting adjourns and every one stands up.
“So what are you doing again?” the promo director asks me.
I laugh out loud.
“I’m on the bench. I’m Adrian Petersen and today, instead of running the ball at the goal line, I’m going to be the water boy.”
The promo man laughs. “Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.”
I have three gold statues on my mantel at home. 3 Emmys for live coverage. It’s like they forget I can dance when I want to.
“Hey can you go down and shoot this bowling thing at the Music City Center.”
I look at the youngster who asks me to do this.
A million thoughts go through my mind as I contemplate this simplistic mundane task.
I think about the bank robbery shoot out where the sheriff died in North Carolina that I was first on the scene . I think about the ice flow that breaks apart from the shore sending a hundred ice fisherman into the middle of Lake Michigan that I covered. I think about tip toeing around the blood of Rasheeba Summeral who had been shot in the head one minute before I arrived. I remember the rich, wine colored stain leaking out of his head and cops telling me not to get his brain matter on my shoes.
I refocus on the youngster before me.
“Can I shoot a convention hall being set up with some country music posters?” I pause trying to figure out if I want to laugh or do I want to cry. “Yeah, I think I can do that.”
I ride silently to the Music City Center. I could put on the radio, but that would be too festive. I don’t feel festive. I feel pensive. I feel insignificant. I feel angry.
I see some transients dart out of the ghetto liquor store. Like a human game of Frogger they dash across the road toward the bricks, what we call the section 8 houses in the hood.
I see imaginary points light up behind the guy and wonder what might happen if I just hit him. Would anyone would care? Would I stop? I guess I would stop. But would I care? I don’t think so. I might wait for the police to come and take a report. “He jumped in front of my car with a bottle of Night Train wine,” I would tell the cop jotting it all down in his cop note pad.
Thankfully, I never have to answer this question. I slow down, and the man crosses safely. I think about asking him for a swig off his Night Train. It’s been a while.
I get to the massive Music City Center. It is a complex shaped sort of like a guitar and takes up a full city block.
There are barriers and security and parking headaches.
The downtown is filled with cowboy boots and straw hats and aspiring wanna be nobodies.
They use to call this Fan Fair. Now it’s known as CMA.
The security guard waves me into the big building.
There are cars swarming back and forth like metallic sharks.
I go up one aisle. I go down another.
I fight for a compact spot with an SUV?
I win, pulling in first.
The guy driving is pissed and I believe he flips me a rather unkind gesture.
I get out and tote a camera on my shoulder.
The garage is massive. There are arrows pointing in every direction.
Broadway this way. Korean Veterans Blvd that way. It’s exapansive and confusing.
I see elevators and stairwells.
WTF? I think to myself.
I am here and want to get this job completed but I can’t help but think this is a stupid assignment for a guy with 3 Emmy’s and who is under orders to investigate matters and break big stories.
This does not feel like any of the above.
I see a couple of parking lot attendants.
“Hey fellas, you know where the set up is on the 3rd floor.”
They look at one another.
“You gotta check in at the security check point,” they say.
“OK. Can you point the way.”
One guy is in a golf cart loaded down with wood and cardboard.
He zooms off.
The 2nd guy walks with me.
“It’s way over there,” he says pointing to the other end of the structure at the dark, far end of the building.
I see now that I am walking a full city block, just under the Earth.
We get to a security check point.
“Can I help you?” a man says.
He speaks through the slot in the thick security glass.
Behind him there are 50 monitors showing video of the garage, and corridors in the convention center and elevators and stairwells.
“Yes. I am here to shoot a country bowling something or other on the 3rd floor.”
He stares at me like I am an idiot or wasting his time or both.
I show him my paperwork.
“Hold on,” he says gruffly.
He reminds me of the doorman at the gate to the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz.
I half way expect him to say, the Wizard’s not here. Come back tomorrow.
Eventually he gives me a credential and tells me where I need to go.
“Up the elevator to the third floor, hang a left, and then walk down a long concourse half a block long and then you’ll be there.”
I am all ready exhausted and I have only made it to this security checkpoint.
As I walk the block and a half under ground to the elevators, I think about a long career.
I think about hiding in the woods as the snipers prepared to kill the bank robber. I think about flying over the heard of dead cows buried under 10 feet of snow. I thought about going to Saudi Arabia for a week and doing 18 stories on everything that was Operation Desert Shield.
Now I’m toting a camera through a cavernous hall to shoot an insignificant room full of people setting up stuff.
I feel my Jam melting away.
The jam is that thing you get when a fire truck roars by. It’s the feeling you get when you get the exclusive ahead of your competitor.It’s the reason you make less money than the rest of your friends so you can always tell the best story at the bar.
Now?
Well, now, it’s hard to even remember what that jam looks like.
I get to the bowling display. It’s two bowling alleys, side by side. It has something to do with country music and internet points and fans competing against one another.
Honestly, I don’t care.
I listen to the man talk, but I don’t listen to a word he says. All I think about is covering the Hurricane in Greenville, N.C. I think about the cars turned over by the tornado in Gallatin, Tennessee. I think about the Ice storm in Atlanta, Georgia.
I have done so much, seen so much, covered so much.
Now I am talking to a man about a bowling alley in a big convention center over a parking garage.
I thank him and take some pictures of the lanes and the balls and the pins and the displays.
I follow the same route out that brought me in.
I check with the Wizard of Oz at the security station and turn in my badge.
I trudge down stairs, and across the underground parking garage for a block.
I am hot. I am tired. I am sweating.
But I did what they wanted.
I start the car and feel the cool air-conditioning hit me in the face.
Just then my iphone dings.
I open my email.
It’s another photographer saying he finished shooting the bowling alley set up and he would be back at the station soon.
I stare at the words.
do they really say that?
Yes they do. And they mean that the assignment desk sent me to shoot this story for the morning show and they either forgot or didn’t realize that another photographer had all ready been assigned to do the very same task.
I laugh out loud.
You know what they say. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.
I think about the drive, the hour wasted, the steps climbed, the Wizard of Oz.
Unbelievable.
Somewhere in a vast enigma of who cares and so what, my lost jam is trying to find its way.
Somewhere the purpose I once had, is gone. That get up and go that once got me out the door has got up and went.
I drive back to the station. I keep the radio off. I want my thoughts to scream at me and ask “Why are you still doing this?”
I don’t have an answer for my thoughts.
I only have the silence of the ride home, a jam lost, a new guy with Night Train wine to run over.
Life’s Crazy™