A kid in my writing class today made a running list of all of the random references I made to pop culture, history and other weird shit in an attempt to illustrate my points and for examples. The list was two pages long after a four-hour lecture on interviewing and quotes and included references to “Airport ’77,” Rosa Parks, Roberto Clemente, “The Poseidon Adventure,” Jim Jones (not that one) and John Wayne.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I was outlining a story about the time I had to interview the mayor about a report regarding his affirmative action director and how she was acquitted of allegations that she did something illegal/unethical. The mayor announced his findings at an NAACP fundraising dinner, which our paper didn’t attend because we probably didn’t figure anything important was going to happen. Politicians go to these things all the time and do the “proud, happy and thrilled” speeches, so there’s not much news there.

The point of the whole story was that I was having to play catch up on an important story and I thought I had prepared for the interview with a lot of great questions. That said, when I called the guy at 11 p.m., woke him up and had him snarling at me, I ended up blowing the interview because I used too many closed-ended questions and he wasn’t doing much elaboration to help me out.

The problem came in for me because I referred to the event as being part of the “rubber-chicken dinner circuit,” which apparently didn’t translate. After class, I was talking about the idea of a “rubber-chicken dinner” thing and such with a couple kids. At that point, the kid who was writing all of my “Doc-isms” told me I said “fried chicken,” which now has me trying to figure out how to best write a suicide note and a resignation letter at the same time.

I’ve written about race, culture and a dozen other things on this blog over the years and one of the things I’ve often noted was how the discussions always dance on a razor’s edge. I’ve also said that I’ve been known to fuck up a lot when it comes to everything, so that doesn’t make things any easier talking about topics that are often raw nerves and sensitive wounds.

This one, however, hit me from left field and I started to realize there’s no real way to discuss it. Think about all the shit people say when something like this happens:

“I have many black friends…”

“I’m not a racist…”

“Anyone who knows me knows that…”

“This obviously wasn’t the intention…”

Or, of course, there’s the Yahoo! Finance explanation: “Spelling error.”

If you spend enough time in my field, you find yourself going through something, in which you wonder if everything you ever worked for is going to go down the shitter. You worry about becoming that tragic tale of how something could have gone so wrong as to cost you everything. It’s like you’re waiting for the second half of the VH1’s “Behind the Music” that comes after “The band was on top of the world…” After the commercial, shit’s going to happen, someone is getting fired, there’s a coke addiction or something…”

In the case of professors, it’s the fear of some kid with rich parents who are pissed about a B- you couldn’t fully document, a living prequel to “Fatal Attraction” or taking a swing and a miss like this.

The minute this kid said “fried chicken” I felt like my soul had been ripped out and I couldn’t breathe or swallow. Some people get fired for less while others retain their jobs despite worse things. It always seems like a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes.

I don’t know what to say or how to say it, but it’s like I want to run through the streets just screaming, “I’M SORRY!” until the cold fucking kills me. That’s the best answer I have for dealing with it, which is obviously no answer at all.

So I wrote this and I left it here because usually writing about something on this blog usually helps me figure something out. Sorry for the dump job.

Doc.