Grandpa University
There are many things I hate about journalism. I hate the fact that I have to interact with human kind. I hate the fact that I cannot blatantly lie. But the thing I hate the most is telling people I am a journalism student. I try to withhold this precious information as long as I can, but if someone asks me what I do it is my journalistic duty to tell them the truth. Luckily, most people do not acknowledge my existence and shove me out of the way so they can get on the subway first. I don’t mind, as I am not in a rush and they could be on the way to their child’s ballet audition, and I really don’t want to talk to the random stranger anyway. But there is one segment of society that is never in a rush, never takes the subway, and never has a child at a ballet audition. This segment always has time to not only acknowledge that I do indeed exist, but to delve into my life like Jessica Fletcher into a murder. This segment is the grandpa segment.
It happens everywhere. I might be sitting calmly in a seat at the theatre, or scrounging through a bucket at a garage sale, or standing in line waiting to vote in the federal election, when some random grandpa who I have never seen before ponders over with a wise little grin.
“Well, isn’t that a pretty smile if I ever did see one myself if I do say so!” he scruffs. I do not like talking to random people for a journalistic assignment. I do not even like talking to my friends. So why should I be forced to converse with some random grandpa just because he is having a lonesome afternoon? But you can’t ignore a random grandpa – perhaps I am a spitting image of his wife Helena who just passed away two months earlier. Besides, many grandpas are from the olden days when murder didn’t exist and everyone was friends, so turning away in disgust might confuse him and cause him to vote for the wrong person, changing the country’s political fate forever. So I must acknowledge, and thus I squiff some homely rat noise and my eye twitches because I know what is about to come.
“So then, what high school do you go to, young lady?”
“Actually, I am in my final year of university.”
“My! But you look like you’re only 12 years old! When you get to my age you’ll be happy! Heheheh. COUGH. So, what are you majoring in?”
“Journalism.”
“Ahh, so you want to be a writer! I can tell you love writing!”
“Actually, I am in BROADCAST journalism.”
“Ahhhh, BROADCAST! So, you want to be one of them beautiful lady news anchors and read me the news every night as I eat my broccoli stew!”
“Um, actually . . .”
“OH! I know! You want to go overseas and be a foreign correspondent in Iraq! Oh, you be careful! You know how the people over there are with their guns and other languages and such!”
“ACTUALLY I am more interested in camerawork and editing.”
“Oh (insert look of utter disappointment, confusion and disgust) . . . well, you know Maricia VinKenny?”
(Okay, just because I am a journalism student does not mean I WATCH THE NEWS!!! I hate the news. And clearly I have never heard of this person in my life.)
“I think I’ve heard of her.”
“Yes, well when she was at CBC she started as a lowly cameraperson, too. Then, ONEDAY CNN offered her a MAGICAL job as a REAL reporter like you see in the movies! Her soul was saved! And you must have seen that controversial interview she did with Palestinian Foreign Commissions Leader, Rabutal Maghastan.”
“Actually, no, I did not see that interview.”
“YOU ARE A JOURNALISM STUDENT AND YOU DID NOT SEE THAT INTERVIEW!!! How could you? You’d better not tell your teachers, because they would be very disappointed! As a journalist you have to watch everything! You have to read every newspaper everyday! That is the only way you’ll know what’s going on in the world! You must LOVE the news! Otherwise you will FAIL and you will live a MEANINGLESS life of NOTHING! You must read every book ever written and carry around a notebook so you can write down everything you see! For instance this conversation with me – THIS could be a story!”
So it could be.
Now, this tale of woe goes against the ethics of journalism as I have created a composite character of a grandpa, though everything said (except those made-up names) has ACTUALLY HAPPENED at various times. Maybe someday they’ll make a movie about me. But the POINT is that FIRST of all, WHY must the grandpa ASSUME that just because I am a journalist I want to write for some big boring paper for the financial section! Granted, in 1929 they only had the big paper presses, but how dare he. And SECOND and MOSTLY of all, how DARE this random grandpa, who has clearly done nothing with his life since he is spending his Friday afternoon sitting at a voting table watching people drop slices of paper into a firmer paper cube, give ME advice on how to be a journalist! HE IS NOT A JOURNALIST! I KNOW MORE THAN HIM AND I DON’T CARE HOW OLD HE IS!!! I paid $5000 a year to learn from ACTUAL journalists – could it be that all I had to do was hang around enough bus depots and I could have had my entire education AND MORE free! Perhaps instead of ethics class, we should have grandpa class and just invite random grandpas off the street to tell us how to be better journalists. In fact, why don’t they just create GRANDPA UNIVERSITY and have an entire school based solely on the teachings of random grandpas. It would be cheap, as there would be no campus. Every class would just be a field trip to a craft sale or mall food court. And the grandpas still think a quarter is a good tip, so they wouldn’t have to be paid much. At the end of two weeks you could get a degree, typed in an extra-large font, to hang on your wall above your orange needlepoint wall-hanging. You could go into the work force at a much younger age, and if you work at one of those places that does mathematical tricks to help you retire early, you could be retired by the time you’re 53! And the sooner people retire, the quicker they’ll get lonely, and the earlier they’ll become a nuisance to society, and the more readily available the next batch of grandpa teachers there will be. If only my name were on the ballot.
It happens everywhere. I might be sitting calmly in a seat at the theatre, or scrounging through a bucket at a garage sale, or standing in line waiting to vote in the federal election, when some random grandpa who I have never seen before ponders over with a wise little grin.
“Well, isn’t that a pretty smile if I ever did see one myself if I do say so!” he scruffs. I do not like talking to random people for a journalistic assignment. I do not even like talking to my friends. So why should I be forced to converse with some random grandpa just because he is having a lonesome afternoon? But you can’t ignore a random grandpa – perhaps I am a spitting image of his wife Helena who just passed away two months earlier. Besides, many grandpas are from the olden days when murder didn’t exist and everyone was friends, so turning away in disgust might confuse him and cause him to vote for the wrong person, changing the country’s political fate forever. So I must acknowledge, and thus I squiff some homely rat noise and my eye twitches because I know what is about to come.
“So then, what high school do you go to, young lady?”
“Actually, I am in my final year of university.”
“My! But you look like you’re only 12 years old! When you get to my age you’ll be happy! Heheheh. COUGH. So, what are you majoring in?”
“Journalism.”
“Ahh, so you want to be a writer! I can tell you love writing!”
“Actually, I am in BROADCAST journalism.”
“Ahhhh, BROADCAST! So, you want to be one of them beautiful lady news anchors and read me the news every night as I eat my broccoli stew!”
“Um, actually . . .”
“OH! I know! You want to go overseas and be a foreign correspondent in Iraq! Oh, you be careful! You know how the people over there are with their guns and other languages and such!”
“ACTUALLY I am more interested in camerawork and editing.”
“Oh (insert look of utter disappointment, confusion and disgust) . . . well, you know Maricia VinKenny?”
(Okay, just because I am a journalism student does not mean I WATCH THE NEWS!!! I hate the news. And clearly I have never heard of this person in my life.)
“I think I’ve heard of her.”
“Yes, well when she was at CBC she started as a lowly cameraperson, too. Then, ONEDAY CNN offered her a MAGICAL job as a REAL reporter like you see in the movies! Her soul was saved! And you must have seen that controversial interview she did with Palestinian Foreign Commissions Leader, Rabutal Maghastan.”
“Actually, no, I did not see that interview.”
“YOU ARE A JOURNALISM STUDENT AND YOU DID NOT SEE THAT INTERVIEW!!! How could you? You’d better not tell your teachers, because they would be very disappointed! As a journalist you have to watch everything! You have to read every newspaper everyday! That is the only way you’ll know what’s going on in the world! You must LOVE the news! Otherwise you will FAIL and you will live a MEANINGLESS life of NOTHING! You must read every book ever written and carry around a notebook so you can write down everything you see! For instance this conversation with me – THIS could be a story!”
So it could be.
Now, this tale of woe goes against the ethics of journalism as I have created a composite character of a grandpa, though everything said (except those made-up names) has ACTUALLY HAPPENED at various times. Maybe someday they’ll make a movie about me. But the POINT is that FIRST of all, WHY must the grandpa ASSUME that just because I am a journalist I want to write for some big boring paper for the financial section! Granted, in 1929 they only had the big paper presses, but how dare he. And SECOND and MOSTLY of all, how DARE this random grandpa, who has clearly done nothing with his life since he is spending his Friday afternoon sitting at a voting table watching people drop slices of paper into a firmer paper cube, give ME advice on how to be a journalist! HE IS NOT A JOURNALIST! I KNOW MORE THAN HIM AND I DON’T CARE HOW OLD HE IS!!! I paid $5000 a year to learn from ACTUAL journalists – could it be that all I had to do was hang around enough bus depots and I could have had my entire education AND MORE free! Perhaps instead of ethics class, we should have grandpa class and just invite random grandpas off the street to tell us how to be better journalists. In fact, why don’t they just create GRANDPA UNIVERSITY and have an entire school based solely on the teachings of random grandpas. It would be cheap, as there would be no campus. Every class would just be a field trip to a craft sale or mall food court. And the grandpas still think a quarter is a good tip, so they wouldn’t have to be paid much. At the end of two weeks you could get a degree, typed in an extra-large font, to hang on your wall above your orange needlepoint wall-hanging. You could go into the work force at a much younger age, and if you work at one of those places that does mathematical tricks to help you retire early, you could be retired by the time you’re 53! And the sooner people retire, the quicker they’ll get lonely, and the earlier they’ll become a nuisance to society, and the more readily available the next batch of grandpa teachers there will be. If only my name were on the ballot.
posted by Laura @ 1:28 p.m.
1 Comments:
At 5:20 p.m.,
Fluttering in the Bell Jar said…
AMEN sista! Stick it to the MAN!
No, but really, I agree. There are so many times I've had people just ASSUME that since I'm in Journalism, I MUST want to be either a newspaper reporter or a news anchor. AS IF THERE ARE NO OTHER OPTIONS!!! I mean, sometimes, I give these people the benefit of the doubt, and perhaps they're just ignorant, and I should educate them. BUT, most of the time I end up realizing that they're just stuck-up little snobs that read the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the Toronto Sun (just for kicks) all during their morning commute, just so they have something to talk about during their boring, meaningless little Bay Street lives. I'm sorry, but I DO NOT want to end up being one of those people. EVER! Therefore, I have boycotted reading the paper (ANY paper) unless it's the life section or the comics (Get Fuzzy is the bees knees, yo), and the only news-type television I watch are documentaries/features. There's more to life than who won the election or who got robbed people! Maybe I am misinformed, maybe I am missing some of the world's events...at least I have a conscience and a mind of my own!
K...that probably didn't make much sense since I'm all hopped up on cold medication, but hopefully somewhere in there my point was made.
-Heather
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