Bob Wooten: An open door for oddballs

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She wore a stocking cap, heavy boots and more coat than the weather called for.

Peering through dark-rimmed eyeglasses with one shattered lens, she was filling in the blanks on an engagement announcement form in the lobby of our newspaper office. All the time, the receptionist was keeping a nervous eye on "Mother," a familiar fixture back in the 1980s at that small newspaper.

It's a good thing our staff member was paying attention, though. After turning in the form to announce her upcoming nuptials in the newspaper, Mother cackled out loud. "Boy, that old buzzard's going to be mad when he reads that," she said on her way out the door.

After a little checking, we found out there was no engagement. Mother was just trying to pull a joke on some poor fellow. The engagement form went straight into File 13.

Mother -- we called her that because she usually had two or three kids in tow -- was one of those oddballs who always find a way into a community newspaper's orbit.

Some wander into the lobby on a regular basis, maybe to get change for a dollar or to fill out a random job application. Or to try getting a bad joke by the gatekeepers.

Others seek out the newsroom so they can bend a reporter's ear, sometimes about a huge story that everyone has missed but is right there if we'd only take a look. Years back, I had one fellow who insisted that if I just went down to Washington and poked around, I'd find out the real story behind the Kennedy assassination.

Well, I thought, that should take me most of a day.

At yet another newsroom, the night copy desk had a regular caller -- the Senior Citizen.

She got her handle because it's the only way she ever introduced herself. "Hi, there. I'm a senior citizen and I just want to know what these people in Congress think they're doing!" Or she'd gripe about the crummy sidewalks in her neighborhood. Or the weather. Or the price of chicken.

Earlier in the day, we might well have dodged the Bag Man on the way into the office. The Bag Man, who wore goggles and dressed head to toe in plastic garbage bags, loved to ride his bicycle through the newspaper's big parking lot when he zipped through the downtown area. The bike might have had brakes but I never saw him use them.

I've worked in a half-dozen newsrooms over the last 30 years. At some point, they all end up with strangeness on the doorstep or on the phone.

In fact, we have a new one prowling around The Northern Virginia Daily right now. Obsessive. Insistent. Intense. Probably harmless.

I say probably because the times have changed. These colorful characters used to be a welcome distraction at a newspaper, just fodder for beer-and-pretzels conversation after work.

Nowadays, workplace violence generates enough headlines to give these colorful characters a more sinister hue.

That's unfortunate, because part of the fun of working at a newspaper ought to be enjoying a large slice of life every day.

* Bob Wooten is the managing editor of the Daily. Contact him at 1-800-296-5137 or at bwooten@nvdaily.com.