Stuff to forget

OK, prepare to be appalled.

The only headline I remember misspelling that was really bad is when I was an intern in Tulsa. Tahlequah, my friend Austin's hometown, I spelled "Talhequah." It made it through on the first edition. Sharon, you might remember that. You weren't mad because spellcheck said I had spelled it right. We made the fix for the Final Home Edition, but Tahlequah is a first edition city.

And since I brought it up, last month I screwed up the edition line. For first edition it's "FINAL EDITION," and the software we use has funky coding, so when I change it I copy and paste "FINAL" to make it say "FINAL FINAL EDITION." I changed "INAL" to say "OME", but I changed the wrong F.

It ran as "HINAL FOME EDITION."

Going back to internships, the worst thing I ever did as an intern was at The Boston Globe. When writing heads, I'd usually write two or three and the slot editor could choose the one he or she liked, or write a different one.

One pay I worked on a centerpiece about city pools possibly losing funding, and it had a photo kicker. A joke headline popped in my head and typed it, just to see whether it would fit. Of course, later in the night I saw him chatting to someone else saying "He has really been doing well, but tonight he wrote this:" and I saw him paste in my joke headline:

"Wet dreams"

Really, the worst stuff I did was when I was at OU. I remember what I kind of think is the best headline I never wrote, a story on a problem on every large campus: parking. The movie had just come out, so this headline was timely:

"Dude, where's my car lot? UOSA says."

But since I was now a journalism major, I had an inkling of news judgment and chickened out.

This next thing I blame on me not knowing any better because I wasn't yet a journalism major. I wrote this story. Don't bother reading the article. I mention it because I did a big no-no: I used two of my friends as sources. I was working at the paper doing about eight to 10 stories a week, taking a full load of summer classes and also working at the theater company. I was desperate.

I used the aforementioned Austin about how great Waffle House is. But what was really bad was when I went through my tape recorded interviews and found a quote from my roommate, Randy, that he said jokingly about video rentals. I decided to use it:

Computer science senior Randy L. also chooses to rent videos from Hastings.

“Hastings is a good place to get movies pretty cheap, porn especially,” he said.

I remember the reaction from Wendy, his future wife:

"Awwww, George ... he's going to move out. You're going to have to find a new roommate, because he's going to move out."

If Randy was mad when he found out, he did a helluva job hiding it -- he laughed and said it was funny. Randy, thanks for being such a good sport.

That article was for the giant 2000 Back to School special section. I think I had more than 20 articles in it, and we were desperate to fill all the space. There was one thing in particular I wrote for it that I was hoping to find on the archives, but no dice. It wasn't there.

But on a hunch, I checked my closet -- as luck would have it, it's among the few clips that survived the tornado of '03.

It is my review of the OU bathrooms.



"It is something on this campus everyone has experienced one time or another. You have 10 minutes until your next class, which is on the other side of the campus, but nature is calling. So you pop into the nearest powder room and find a broken down sewage plant waiting for you.

Here's a little guide to the best and worst campus restrooms that may help you in your next time of need. The ratings are based on crack research so our findings aren't just full of crap."

Yep, that's the lede. Writing about the student unions upper-floor toilets I got away with "This place is usually pretty quiet, and the union's late-night access makes emptying your poop chute there a 24-7 possibility."

I reviewed 10 bathrooms, relying on intel from our female staffers for the ladies rooms, and used a ratings system of one to four urinal cakes, with four out of four being the best. But for the mens rooms, I really did do the research myself. An example: I called up the office of David Boren, the OU president, getting his secretary. I told her who I was and that I was with the school paper, and she tried to transfer me to the press secretary.

"Wait," I said. "I just have a quick question. Does President Boren have a private restroom in his office?"

"No," she answered suspiciously.

"Oh, so he uses the public toilets in Evans Hall with everyone else."

"Well I would assume so!"

That's when I realized how this sounded. I tried to explain, but she had already hung up.

It was just as well. I had to use the bathroom, and I now had to walk to Evans Hall.