Graceful Parenting in Austin

I just almost wet my pants the other day. I got this email…

My name is A. Alter, and I’m a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. I’m working on an article about church shopping and came across a blog post that you wrote about your church shopping experience. I was wondering if you would be interested in being interviewed for the piece. I’ve interviewed pastors and theologians but am hoping to include a churchgoer’s perspective on the process of finding a home church.

Please let me know if you’re available for an interview, and if so, when and how I should contact you.

Well, this must be a scam of some kind. I look for references to financial transactions that must occur before the interview can take place. I look for links to click on so I can see lots of ads or download a virus. I look for signs of a mass mailing, but it seems to be addressed to only my email, using my name.

So, I check the return email address, still suspicious of the source. It is xxxxx@wsj.com. I find the Wall Street Journal On-line, at http://online.wsj.com.

That is the part where I almost wet my pants.

Then I can’t decide. Should I write her back? I decide that I cannot possibly write her back.

As a girl, I didn’t want to be a rock star or actress, I had a very specific dream of being on Donahue and being asked a very difficult question. I collect my thoughts and then state my answer clearly, so that even if everyone doesn’t agree, they at least understand. I felt like I had so many ideas in my head and no way to express them and I wanted to be able to do that more than anything when I grew up.

And here is my chance. It isn’t Donohue, but since that isn’t on TV anymore, the Wall Street Journal could work.

No, this could not possibly work. Because when you grow up, you learn what you are good and and what your aren’t and I learned that I am not quick on my feet, it takes me, on average, about two days to collect my thoughts and state my answer clearly. That is why I blog. That is also my biggest trouble with blogging, that even blogging is too fast for me. I should write encyclopedias instead. This reporter is going to want me to talk on the spot, in real time and this isn’t something I can do and still make sense.

A friend calls and I tell her how I am NOT writing this reporter back and she says that I actually talk in real time all the time and I do make sense. I am able to make friends and keep a job and if I don’t think about it too much, I might realize that I am, indeed, able to talk.

So I take my time in carefully crafting a reply that hopefully makes sense. I reread it and edit and it is finally ready to go.

A, Alter,

I would love to. I’m home on bed rest now, so I’m pretty available. My cell is xxxxxxxxxx.

Carol Ramsey

I can’t press Send, though. Because she might be at her desk and she might call me right back and as soon as I press send and I will be terrified of my phone for every minute after. And maybe she won’t call back for a week and then that is a whole week of being terrified. If I don’t press send, then I am safe.

So I wait.

No, this isn’t working either. Now I’m just worried about how long it will take me to press Send. So I press Send.

She calls me and I can’t believe it when she says “Hello, this is A. Alter, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal.” This may be the most famous person I have ever talked to, except for Britt Daniel of Spoon, who I knew in college, but the second most famous at least.

She asks me questions and I answer, with long pauses and a lot of ummmms. It sounds like I’m not fitting the profile she is looking for because my husband and I didn’t attend a lot of churches when church shopping. I explain our process and where we ended up and it wasn’t all that interesting.

The interview takes about 15 minutes. Is this my 15 minutes of fame?

Later in the day, I think of all the insightful and meaningful things I could have said about church shopping. I send her a follow-up email with my thoughts, in case she can use them. I don’t know if I will be in the article or not, I’ll have to wait and see.

I thought about Sarah Palin a lot during this day. What it must feel like to go from talking pretty normally to the people in her state, then have to talk on the spot, in real time, in front of the entire nation in interviews, speeches and debates. Oh, my. That is amazing. I would definitely wet my pants.

But I’m not Sarah Palin, I’m Carol Ramsey, a Mom-blogger and I guess for today I have done all right. I’ll keep blogging, because it is good practice for collecting thoughts and talking clearly. Maybe one day I’ll be ready for Oprah.