If He Had Been There on Time...
He Would Have Known the Answer Already
By Drew Gallagher
ADVANCE COLUMNIST
When I heard that founding father Marty Davis was leaving The Advance I was surprised and saddened. Mostly saddened, because I was concerned about the fate of this column. Not so much about the fate of local journalism.
Before he took off, Marty told me he was being offered a lucrative deal to start a new publication he would call The Virginia Free Press, which was not to be confused with the Fredericksburg Free Press. It was Marty’s take on the old adage: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join something that sounds strangely like ‘em but is not in fact ‘em.”
Publisher Leigh Anne Van Doren came to me in this time of trouble, and said something that didn’t infringe on any Beatles copyright laws in assuring me that The Advance would continue in Marty’s absence, and that she would find a capable leader to shepherd us into a new era of journalistic excellence.
That leader of shepherding turned out to be Dr. Steve Watkins, my arch nemesis.
This was like Leigh Anne hiring Lex Luther to run The Daily Planet, and Superman having to pick up Lex’s kryptonite paper weight every morning when he got to work. I wasn’t sure that Superman would be able work under this new editor. I wasn’t sure that this new editor would allow me to use a Superman analogy. Or allow me to drop into third person for comedic effect.
My history with Steve is a long and tortured one that began in 1990 under a pink marshmallow sky on an early fall evening at Mary Washington College.
Deer and antelope played on the grass outside Chandler Hall. Happy birds sang snippets of Guns N’ Roses while spreading garlands along campus walk—like the animated scenes in Mary Poppins. I had just returned to my dorm after a long day of alming for the poor and bathing and rebandaging the feet of local lepers.
I knew I had a three-hour class that evening for Introduction to Journalism, but I mistakenly thought that all three-hour classes at Mary Washington ran from 7-10 p.m. This was based on my lone experience in a one-night-a-week Intro to Philosophy course freshman year. It turned out I was being introduced to a lot of things those first semesters, including ham steaks.
For some inexplicable reason, Mary Washington used to print student schedules using military time, so when I returned to my dorm room that evening I was working under the assumption that at 6:30 I still had half an hour to get to my journalism class and sit expectantly, ardent student that I was, in the front row.
It was only after I packed up my royal blue JanSport backpack with caffeinated drinks, sharpened pencils, and a pillow that I actually glanced at my schedule—and froze.
It read: “Intro to Journalism 18:00-21:00.”
I was late, which I would have realized much sooner had I been stationed at Fort Benning.
I sprinted to class with such grace and zeal that the deer and antelope likely mistook me for one of their own, but I couldn’t stop to play in their reindeer games. My future as a humorist had missed its first deadline.
The heavy oaken door was shut when I arrived outside the classroom, but I was able to open it with the stealth of a sixth-level thief—only to be met with the steely glare of the new professor, an ersatz Florida surfer with 70s mustache and Hawaiian shirt. He stopped his lecture midsentence and continued to stare at me with his intense, cold, and unfriendly gaze (per Google).
I sheepishly made my way to an empty desk, but it was evident that the moment would require me to speak. I kneeled, bowed my head in reverence, and uttered: “I’m sorry, Learned Sir. I have a problem with military time.”
Dr. Watkins looked at me with the same disdain that I had once seen in the eyes of the father of a born-again Christian girl who wanted to go to a high school dance with me and my theological skepticism. The words Steve spoke in that moment will haunt me until my dying day:
“No,” he said. “You have a problem with me.”
I slouched in my seat and fretted for my future of jibes and gambols. The ancient desktop on which I laid my JanSport, a rotting slab of wood carved up by generations of bored students past, spoke directly to my torment: “You Suck!”, “Clapton is God,” and “I Hear Historic Preservation is easy and the professors don’t care if you are late for class.”
But I remained undaunted in the face of the withering classroom desk graffiti, and paid rapt attention to the words flowing from this great man’s mouth as he extolled the virtues of speedwriting and its necessity in the journalism age then known as the 1990s. I thought he might have misspoken, and maybe he meant the 1890s, but didn’t want to embarrass him in front of my classmates. I did have a question, though.
“Why would you need to ever use shorthand if you have a tape recorder?” I asked in a voice so full of timbre that my classmates must have thought they were in the presence of a modern-day Cicero.
Steve glared at me once again. “If you had been here on time, you would know the answer already,” came the blistering reply.
I was indeed no Cicero. I was the orator who spoke with a lisp and was the laughingstock of the Roman Senate. And to further cement my humiliation, my friend Shelli, who had apparently been on time, whispered, “Wow, he really does not like you.”
Now that same man is my new boss. I am hopeful that his storied career as an author and educator has inured him to the transgression of my one-time tardiness. I am hopeful that we, as professionals, can move beyond the painful memory that is forever locked in the amber of my mind. I am hopeful this is not our Zero Dark Thirty Hour, because I have no idea what time that might be, but it sounds ominous.
Having moved to Virginia recently from Rhode Island, I am always surprised to hear students call their college teachers "doctor." To me doctors are people who wear serious expressions on their faces and stethoscopes around their necks. We call our teachers "professah."