The caller

"What kinda journalist are you?" asked the caller.

It didn't matter that the caller was an elderly and slightly hard-of-hearing individual, and likely calling because my number was one of the main ones on the list inside the newspaper.

Regardless of all of these somewhat forgivable attributes, it still stung a wee bit when the caller muttered those words rather scornfully. This wasn't one of the countless darling elderly folks I've encountered while working for a newspaper.

Was I bothered too much by this?

It had happened because the caller had contacted me and inquired as to why a certain topic (which in reality wasn't actually factual and therefore not cover-able) hadn't been covered. The conversation rambled a fair bit on my caller's end, from discussing some church facts to asking me if I knew the history of World War I.

I was meanwhile trying to figure out a polite way to excuse myself off the phone, and nothing had come to me so far.

At some point I was asked whether I knew an obscure fact about a parish I hadn't yet encountered (look, I'm new here, and there are a lot of churches), and I said that I honestly wasn't certain. This was followed up with a similar obscure question, whose answer I still couldn't provide, leading my caller to mutter "what kinda journalist are you?"

I guess I said something diplomatic in a shrugging kind of voice, (i.e., "I haven't been here very long,") which didn't really answer the rhetorical question but didn't matter as the caller had wandered onto another topic.

Eventually the caller abruptly thanked me and said goodbye and hung up the phone. I was at least relieved that I didn't have take the route of "sorry, but someone's calling me on the other line."

It wasn't as though I was asking that caller's approval - far from it. It wasn't as though some fellow journalist had even said it.

I guess I felt somewhat invaded, that someone could call my safe little desk phone and ramble on about topics that I was "supposed to know" and then demand why I didn't know all about these topics. If I were faster of a thinker, I probably could have talked my way out of the conversation quickly and avoided the whole scenario from happening.

Though getting defensive about it wouldn't have been very productive; the caller, being hard-of-hearing to begin with, probably wouldn't have caught any of the excellent arguments for the dignity of my position anyway.

I just had to sit there while the conversation stretched on and on.

But that odd comment stuck to me for a bit, and I really wondered if I had been too sensitive to be able to feel offended by that.

What if someone actually were to come up in my face, and demand, in person, "what kinda journalist are you?" What if I really had to defend my position against some sort of dramatic crisis? Would I just mumble something incoherent and shrivel up?

I hope not. I hope that if this type of situation were to arise "for real" so to speak, I'd be able to stand up for myself much better than I did with this elderly, harmless caller.