Spanking

No, this has nothing to do with Suzanne (although I'm guessing she'd be into it). I'm seriously thinking about quitting my job. Up until last night I had every intention of honoring my commitment to my chief and ND to stay a full year; but this is getting out of hand.

The story Sarah decided to cover last night was about spanking. In particular, it was about a kid in a town out on the fringe of our market who was paddled at school by a principal. The kid's mother sent Sarah an email saying that she never gave the school her permission to paddle the kid, and that the principal did it anyway. She says she called the small town police department to try to have the principal arrested for assault, but they refused to file a report.

So off we went to cover the spanking story.

The drive out to Spankingville should have been about 45 minutes. The problem was that I had never been to this particular town before and didn't know where it was. I had a general idea of the direction, but I wasn't sure what road to take to get there. Sarah is newer here than I am, so I figured she didn't know either.

No problem, I thought, I'll just ask the desk for directions. Unfortunately, our dayside desk guy (who is also our 6pm anchor) had no more idea where Spankingville was than I did.

No problem, I thought, I can read a map. I keep a state map in the Hate Van, so my intention was to figure out where we were going once we got loaded up.

"What are you doing?" Sarah asked, when we got in the van.

"Figuring out how to get out there," I said.

"You don't need to do that," she said. "The woman sent me directions."

"Can I see them?" I asked.

"What for?" she said.

"So I can match them with the map and get an idea where we're going."

"We don't have time for that," she said. "It takes an hour to get out there, and we need to get moving."

I didn't feel like arguing with her. "Okay," I said. "Where to first?"

"Head out 70," she said.

So I maneuvered across town through traffic and headed out State Highway 70. But something didn't seem right.

"70 goes south," I said, once we were on it.

"Yeah. So?"

"Isn't Spankingville east of here?"

"The directions say to enter town on 70," she said. "So we're taking 70."

Fine. Jeez. Have it your way.

We drove for about 45 or 50 minutes. I noticed Sarah starting to get agitated.

"Are we still on 70?" she asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"Nothing. Just keep going."

Another fifteen minutes went by, with no sign of Spankingville. We came into another town.

"Are you SURE we're on 70?" Sarah asked.

"Look, there's a sign," I said. There was a sign that did, in fact, indicate that we were traveling south on 70.

"Something's wrong," she said. "We should have seen the turn off by now."

"Should I pull over?" I asked.

"No, keep going," she said. "I'll call the desk for help."

She dialed the phone. I only heard one side of the conversation.

"This is Sarah. I need help getting to Spankingville... I don't know." To me: "Where are we?" I told her the name of the town, and she relayed that to the desk. "Well that's how the lady TOLD me to go... Yes, she said 70... Well that's what the lady said..." She was becoming increasingly agitated. "How the FUCK should I know that?... Hey! Hello?... Fucker hung up on me!"

She dialed again.

"Hey this is Sarah. Hello?... God dammit! Sonofabitch hung up on me again!"

"I'll just pull over," I said, heading off the road.

"Shut the fuck up!" she said. "Keep driving."

"I'm going to check the map," I said, steadily. Don't let this bitch make you mad, I thought.

She didn't answer, because she was dialing again. This time whoever answered handed her off to Al, one of the other photographers, who happened to be standing at the desk. He tried to talk her through it, but he couldn't even figure out where we were. Finally he told her he couldn't help her, and that we were on our own.

"FUCK!" she screamed, and threw the phone on the floor.

Meanwhile, I had been looking at the map and figured out where we were. One thing I can do well is read a map, and I quickly determined that highway 70 went nowhere near Spankingville. We actually needed to go out to the east on the Interstate. We had just driven an hour out of our way.

"Look," I said. "I figured out where we are. We need to backtrack--"

"Jesus fuck!" She said, panic in her voice. "We're not gonna make it in time!"

"Calm down, and I'll get us there," I said. While she was on the phone, I had already figured out an alternate route to cut across toward the northeast, so we didn't have to go all the way back into town.

"I can't believe this," she said.

"It'll be okay," I said.

"NO, it WON'T!" she said. "I can't believe this! God dammit! I can't believe you fucking got us lost!"

At that point I became very, very angry. I just took deep breaths and gripped the steering wheel.

"What? Oh, are you MAD? Serves you right!" she said. "You FUCKED UP my STORY!"

I continued to stare straight ahead.

"You always have to be the MAN," she said. "God forbid you listen to directions! God forbid you ask for help! No, you have to be the MAN!" Okay, now she was just raving.

Without a word, I put the car in drive and pulled a u-turn.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"We're going back to the station," I said.

"Oh, so you're refusing to do the story now?"

"Nobody treats me like this," I said. "Nobody."

"Wait, you're really going back to the station?" Surprisingly, there was a hint of terror in her voice.

"Yep."

She suddenly became a LOT calmer. We drove for several minutes in dead silence.

I got tired of listening to my own heavy breathing and turned on the radio. I was running through what I was going to say when I got back. How could I justify making the decision to dump a story? I don't really have the authority to do that. I had made up my mind, though. Somebody else was gonna have to work with this idiot.

"I'm sorry," I heard Sarah say quietly.

"What?" I heard her, but I couldn't quite believe it.

"I said I'm sorry," she said.

"Fat lotta good that does now," I said.

"No, I'm really sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have talked to you that way."

"No, you shouldn've."

"I know. I, um... I take medication," she said.

"Obviously it isn't working," I said. I was mad enough to say just about anything at that point.

"No, it isn't," she said. "My new doctor is trying to adjust my dosage, so I've been out of whack for a while. Today's a bad day."

"You've been a bitch ever since I met you," I said.

"I'm sorry," she said, very sheepishly. I didn't say anything.

"Look," she said. "I really am sorry. I don't want to act this way. I just get panicked sometimes. I don't mean to take it out on other people."

My anger was starting to fade, and pity was slowly slipping in to take its place. I took a deep breath. "I won't put up with anybody talking to me that way," I said.

"You shouldn't. I'll try to do better."

I thought about it for a minute. We were coming up on the turnoff to cross over to Spankingville.

"Do you still want to try to do this story?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

I made the turn and felt a sense of relief. I really did not want to risk the heat for dumping the story. On the other hand, I still wanted her to think I had the resolve to do it. The threat is usually more persuasive than the act, so I'm glad I didn't have to follow through.

We got there about 40 minutes later, about an hour late total. Sarah had called ahead to the woman and alerted her that we'd been held up, but we missed the principal at the school.

Incidentally, the exit we took off the Interstate to get to Spankingville was 70. County Road 70. It took us right into town, and from there the woman's directions were perfect.

We interviewed this redneck woman and got footage of her helping her kid with homework. He very obviously had some sort of attention disorder, because he kept jumping up and running off. He was also very loud, and at one point he just looked right at her and said, "NO!" She had almost no control over him at all.

Sarah managed to get in touch with the school principal at home, so he came out to meet us at the school for an interview. There I got video of the form the woman signed, giving the school permission to use corporal punishment on her kid. Whoa, what? Yes, this woman actually gave the school permission to beat her kid, then tried to have the principal arrested when he exercised that option on her brat. That's why the police wouldn't file the report. According to the principal, the police showed the woman the form and verified that it was her signature. He gave us a copy.

I was surprised that the principal was able to show that to us, because I thought it would violate some kind of student privacy rule. What he wouldn't do is discuss the kid's actual violation. All he would say is that they reserve paddling as a last resort.

"It's actually more effective to save that as a threat," he said. "Once a kid's been paddled, it's not so scary any more, so it's not much of a deterrent." See how that works with kids?

We got what we needed and headed back to the van. "This is not a story," I said as we left the school parking lot.

Sarah called in and talked to Wendy. "Wendy said she wants us to do it anyway," she told me when she got off the phone. "She wants us to make it about parents who want to take back the right to paddle their kids and what they have to do."

We were dangerously short on time, but we dropped back by the woman's house and interviewed her on the front porch one more time to get her reaction.

"I don't remember signin' no form," she said.

"Isn't that your signature?" Sarah asked.

"I guess it is," she said. "But I don't remember signin' it."

Fucking rednecks.

Sarah called and talked to the principal a bit more during the ride home and got enough information to do the "rescinding permission" story. She actually got right to work on it when we got back and, despite the fact that we were so late, left me 45 minutes to edit!

Still, I intend to bring this up with the powers that be. I realize she has a problem, but I shouldn't have to deal with it. My first stop this afternoon will be the ND's office to discuss this medication issue and what can be done to alleviate this constant unpleasantness.

The day wasn't a total loss. Lynn noticed how tense I was almost immediately when we got into the van for the ride home and asked me what was wrong. I started telling her the story.

"What a spoiled bitch!" Lynn said. "Sounds like SHE's the one who needs a spanking!"

The story was too long to finish during the short ride home, so she asked me inside when we got to her house. She positioned herself on the couch and sat me down on the floor in front of her, leaning back against the couch between her knees. Then she rubbed my shoulders while I talked.

And I think that's about all I ought to say about that.