memoirs of a roving reporter

while i was at resident assistant training (which deserves a separate post by itself), i remembered this funny episode while interviewing the head of the agape center for an article i was writing for the college newspaper.
as i was settling into my chair trying to purge all feelings of discomfort and awkwardness, i whisked out my voice recorder and pressed the red 'record' button. i felt the strange sensation of nothing. i put my ear to the tape but there was no sound. It was then that I realized that I had forgotten to load the batteries the previous night. By this time, the interviewee was rattling off and to avoid looking unprofessional, i put down the recorder as if nothing was wrong, pretending as if the recorder was working, while writing bits of the conversation. at the end of the interview, i had random words strung out in arbitrary order such as "mission trips - good - gives student exposure" which were hardly pulitzer prize winning profound statements. while i wrote the article, i filled in the blanks, e.g. Joe Doe said that "mission trips are good and gives students exposure to the world" which was nowhere close to what he had said. I am the next Jason Blair ;) .