Need More Sex In Headlines

Today was press day (hooray!) and I spent half my day proofing pages and the other half at a board meeting for the county hospital system. The board meeting was pretty successful, in that it was exciting enough to keep everyone awake and people were throwing out tons of numbers and stats. I adore stats and numbers, and I tell everyone this. All of my coworkers have probably heard me say this like 1,000 times, but it's because grad school put the FEAR of BAD STUDIES into my heart.

Anyway, a bunch of us reporters were milling around looking at final pages when Aleshia commented on the headline "Get your groove on to put food on the table." It was about a '60s music festival kind of fund raiser thing for a food bank, and it's something I wrote in the morning because we needed a long headline. Groove is totally '60s music, right? It's also kind of a euphemism for sex, as Aleshia pointed out. Whoops. I completely did not see that.

Nor did I see it when John pointed out a headline on one of his stories, which said something like "CEOs expect more blows during holiday season." I bet they think it's an awesome Christmas gift.

I was going to ride Topper today, but I'd completely forgotten it rained a lot this week. All of the arenas (except the big covered one) and the lunge pen were flooded into quicksand, and there were 8 horses and show jumps in the covered arena. I was not going to fight with two lessons, that many horses and the arena all blocked up with jumps. Not worth my time. That's part of the reason we moved to this barn; the last one only had one medium-sized arena, and when there were more than 3 horses it was just too damn crowded to function, and Topper would flip his shit and start getting the other horses riled up. If it hadn't rained, it would have been a great night, but oh well. I grazed the horses for a bit in the cool weather instead.

When the horses were busy stuffing their horses, I tried calling my parents, but I think this is the weekend where they're down in Florida at a wake for the MH-53J. Let me explain the 53: This was one of the biggest definers of my family while I was growing up. It's a massive helicopter used for special operations, and my dad piloted one of these for most of his career. He lived and breathed the 53. It was a cool-looking helicopter, lots of guns and rockets hanging off it, and there was a very small community of pilots and their families, and a very small number of bases the helicopters were based out of, so we all knew each other really well. It was the extended family that comes with small niches in the military.

Anyway, they finally retired the 53--it was basically a Vietnam-era aircraft, and while it was effective, the Air Force is moving toward other types of aircraft, like the tiltrotor V-22. All of the 53 pilots are sad, since it's the end of an era--the end of their era--and there's basically a wake for the 53 and its programs and its pilots down in Florida. My mom and dad are going and will probably get tipsy-giggly and trade stories with others, stories about flying incredibly low between the hills in Scotland in thunderstorms and taking Navy SEALS into snow-blinded areas to drop them for missions.

It kind of makes me sad, too. This is something, a career of my father's, an identifier for so long, and now it's gone. It's this reminder that my life is no longer defined by what my parents do but what I do--something that still takes some getting used to. When you're in school, everyone asks, "What do your parents do?" Now, people ask, "What's your job?" It always seems strange to me to say, "I'm a reporter" or "I'm a journalist." (It will be stranger yet when I say "I'm unemployed" because newspapers disappear into a black hole, but hopefully I don't have to get to that point for a while yet.)

Anyway . . . while my parents are mourning, I am not! Not yet! The Red Sox somehow dug themselves out of a hole and won the game tonight and are now 2-3 with the Rays. Whew! I was preparing myself for commiserating comments to others when I wear my Sox hat this weekend (because I hate brushing my hair or showering on Saturdays unless I have to), and now it looks like I have a bit more time. And since we're focusing on headlines today, ESPN's headline of the game story on the main Web page is "Don't Stop Believing." Am I the only one who will now always associate that song with the last 4 minutes of the Sopranos?