I was hoping it would be a huge color lead photo on the front of the Lifestyle section or the Perspective section. When I didn't see it there, I took myself to bed and decided to look for it in the morning.
Well, morning came pretty soon. At 8:40am my phone rang.
Ring ring!
"Hello?" I said, groggily.
"Is this Jeff Ford?"
"Yes."
"The same one in today's paper?"
"Yeah."
"Well ... you don't know me, but my name is Greg [I've changed his name] and I wanted to thank you for writing that article. I'm a mechanic at [major Atlanta airline], and they've been doing the same thing here. They keep hiring inexperienced mechanics because they're cheaper. We're talking airplane safety here!
"I just wanted to thank you for speaking out."
"Well, thanks Greg," I said. "To be honest, I haven't seen the article yet. Where is it?"
"Really? Oh, it's on page F3, in the Business section." No wonder I couldn't find it!
I was a little disoriented, but he was so enthusiastic I didn't disabuse him of the notion that I wrote the article. (If you're reading this, I didn't write the article, I just contributed to it a little.)
We talked for a little while longer. Then I told him that I was kinda still sleeping, but thanks for calling.
Bud went down to get the paper, mumbling "F three? I thought it was supposed to lead the section?" I love that man! He brought it back up and we looked at the picture and read though the article and felt proud for a while, then we went back to bed.
The Midtown Men called next. Actually, the phone rang all morning. It was nice. I ran into people in the park who saw it. That was nice too.
A couple of neighbors saw it at work, where their coworkers had posted it in the breakroom. That was nice, too.
So that was my 15 minutes of fame.