Fake It ‘Til You Make It
You learn early in newspapers that confidence is mostly posture. You don’t need to know the thing. You need to look like you do until you’ve bought enough time to actually learn it.
In September of ’65, when the Lorain Journal hired me as a sportswriter, I had just enough posture to nod along when the editor said, “You’ll start with football.” I didn’t know a trap block from a mousetrap.
So the first thing I did—before my first assignment, before my first paycheck—was send away for a free booklet from our rival paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Football for Wives: The Game Explained. That was my secret weapon. Not a coaching manual, not a rulebook. A pamphlet written so housewives could follow the Browns on Sunday, complete with cartoon diagrams and a man named “Coach” explaining what a “down” was like he was talking to a golden retriever.
It arrived in a thin envelope, the kind that already felt embarrassed. I tucked it into my reporter’s notebook and drove out to cover Keystone vs. Midview, the Friday night lights bouncing off the aluminum bleachers. I stood on the sideline pretending to study formations while actually thumbing through a cartoon diagram of “the quarterback sneak.”
Every time the crowd roared, I looked up like I knew why.
By the fourth quarter I had learned two things: football is mostly chaos, and if you write about it confidently enough, nobody asks how you got there. I filed my story, got my byline, and never told a soul about the booklet.
The statute of limitations has long passed. I can confess it now: I’ve been faking it ever since. Not the writing. Just the certainty.
Turns out that’s the part everyone fakes.
© Dale Scherfling
Dale Scherfling is a writer/poet, creative writing instructor, and retired U.S. Navy photojournalist. A former newspaper sportswriter, editor, and photographer, he is the recipient of three U.S. Army Front Page Journalism Awards. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Chiron Review, Close to the Bone, Yellow Mama, San Diego Poetry Annual, Monterey Poetry Review, and Mangrove Review, among others. He lives in Pennsylvania.
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