Flashback: Newspaper Stories

Prompt #1: What are your local newspapers? Has your name ever been mentioned in one? Has your picture ever appeared? How did you feel about that?

Growing up, our local newspaper was the “Lincoln Journal Star”, a liberal and not particularly newsy multicolor daily. We received it when I was really young, and I remember the paper guy always showed up during supper to collect his money. Our newspaper days were short-lived though, and I don’t remember getting the paper after I’d learned how to read.

In fact, I mostly remember the rather degrading nickname we had for the Journal Star (a bathroom fixture that roughly rhymes with “journal”?)

But that didn’t mean that I turned down the offer when a features writer from the Journal Star wanted to write an article about me.

I was one of two homeschooled National Merit Semifinalists in the area that year, and apparently that made me a good “local interest” story.

I agreed to an interview, scheduled a time. Somebody robbed a bank in Norfolk (pronounced “Nor-fork”) that day. Shots were fired and my feature writer went north to do public interest on some real news.

At the rescheduled interview, after brief introductions, JoAnne (the features writer) sat forward on my Mom’s slipcovered couch in our tiny living room. Somehow we’d managed to mostly ban the rest of the kids from the room, so it was just me and Mom and JoAnne. JoAnne took out her yellow legal pad and asked her first question: “Can you show me where you do school?”

Mom and I looked at each other and laughed. I didn’t have anywhere in particular that I “did” school. I did school at the kitchen table, on the living room floor, on my bed, at a table at Boston Market (where I worked part time), in the car, at church, you name it.

Her second question struck out as well: “What does a typical school day look like?” Uh, yeah. Typical school day. Do we have one of those?

We ended up talking about books mostly, about my passion for learning, for reading, for doing.

Since the photographer couldn’t take a picture of me “where I do school”, we opted for a photo of me lying on my mom’s porch swing with a copy of Pride and Prejudice on my chest.

When the article came out, I was appalled by the first line: “Rebekah Menter calls herself bookish, and it’s true–there’s not much the 17-year-old Merit Scholar semifinalist has done, or imagined doing, that she hasn’t studied and read about first.”

Of course, now the whole Lincoln Journal Star-reading population will think that I haven’t an original thought in my head, I fumed.

But the article was positive overall, and I wasn’t too disappointed by the results. I relished the cards that came in the mail carrying a clipped article and a handwritten note of congratulations. Most of those notes were from women who’d helped shape me into the young woman I was–my typing teacher from seventh grade, my Chemistry teacher from 10th and 11th grades, an older woman my Mom and I met with once a week in my early high school years to walk around the State capitol and pray.

It was a fun experience, I suppose, my fifteen minutes of fame–but I’ve since become much less extraordinary, and have settled for baring my soul online, in my own words (no “there’s not much she’s done, or imagined doing, that she hasn’t studied and read about first” here.)

If you want to read the article, you’re welcome to do so by clicking the above picture. That’ll make a large photo of the whole article appear in a separate tab or window so you can read it. If not, feel free to ignore it :-)