On assignment - weird places you have filed from

I noticed you mentioned an "Us" in there.
Condoms and a crack pipe? What the hell are you complaining about. :


;D

 

That they didn't leave any crack for him?

 

Of either variety.

 

the principal's office of the winning high school football team when I was a stringer. That was an interesting experience.

 

Well this was a disappointing post.

 

From a grammar/punctuation standpoint, or overall?

 

Starts with him missing his bus, gets a ride with a bus full of cheerleaders and then......nothing. He's got to learn embellish a story like that. Something about how he filed with his laptop balanced on someone's back or something. Something about finding a place to plug in, nut graf, typing with one hand -- something!

 

Let your fingers do the walking.

 

I agree, that story needed something.
Let me try a revised version, picking up when he got on the bus ...

He did not have enough space so he put me up in the bus with the cheerleaders. The principal at the time didn't realize how fateful this decision would be.
So I am in a bus with nothing but screaming cheerleaders, why are they screaming? An excellent question since the game was over and they had 45 minutes before they made it back to their school and their cars still in the parking lot.
I didn't think teenagers could scream like that, but that was just the beginning.
I used my Sprint phone as a cellular modem as I filed my story. The cheerleader I was sitting beside edged in a little closer to see what I was working on. She seemed nice enough. She looked at my notes and when I called out for the rushing total for the running back, she leaned in and whispered, "213 yards, two touchdowns."
It was the way that she whispered it. She hung by ear just a second too long, her warm breath smelled of double bubble and then she said, "do you need anything else?"
In my deadline fueled haze, I though five more minutes would be nice, but I told her "no."
The other girls were looking in, over my shoulder to see what I was writing, but I was typing furiously. This was my first job, I was 22 and right out of college. Covering high school football was like a dream. I didn't make any money, but I didn't care. The rush I got from filing was enough to make up for the dinners of ramen noodles, mixed with a can of tuna. But that was just for special occasions. Most nights it was one or the other, not both.
The coach had a problem with having me on the bus. She wasn't happy with the principal's decision, but he was the boss apple sauce and it wasn't like anything happened.
At least on the bus.
After I filed, I called the desk to make sure they had the copoy and I shut my laptop down.
That's when she introduced herself.
"Sara, my name's Sara," she said. "I'm a senior."
They call me Sportsnut, I said and for the first time I noticed her. She was very pretty and had that Alabama drawl that I was still getting used to, but I liked more and more.
"You work for the paper," she asked and I said yes. "I've never known anyone who worked at the paper before. Most of the guys who come to games aren't cute like you."
I should have sensed trouble, but I didn't. It flew right over my head, like a shot to deep center and I'm in the outfield and I don't even bother looking, because I know it was gone.
Sara though, she was all about trouble, something I caught on to as she edged a little closer, her hip touching mine and finally I realized what the hell was going on.
The coach already knew that Sara was trouble and for the rest of the ride back I had trouble breathing.
I was stuck.
I couldn't get up and move to another seat. The bus was crowded to begin with.
The bench seat was small and I couldn't move around much and I couldn't say anything to her. If I caused a scene, it had the potential to get ugly, so with no escape in sight, I sat there. As she rubbed against me, her breath hot in my ear as she whispered about how she liked the older boys, about how they knew how to make her feel special.
When the bus finally creaked into the parking lot, I had never been so happy. Yet, in a way, I was sad.
I had a story, I real-life, honest-to-God story and I knew that I wouldn't be able to share it.
I knew that if later on down the line, a chance would appear on a message board to share, I knew that I couldn't.

Le Fin
Read more at jayfarrar.net/madeupcrap/

 

TRS80 balanced precariously over the deep fryer using acoustical couplers hooked to the wall phone next to the flattop in the kitchen of a small Middle Peninsula town's only eatery. Short order boy flipped burger and cakes while I filed verdict in murder trial.

Top that one Bird Scribe!

 

Yes! See, that's what that story needed. Still not the "happy" ending I would have given it. But good stuff.

BTW, I went to jayfarrar.net/madupcrap and I got this: "The page cannot be found"

 

That is so close to a Penthouse Letter that I actually could not stop reading it. Also just for the record, I was 20 and her name was Kelly.