Overheard at the dinner table

Me: I applied for a part-time editing job on a Web site called Overheard at the Beach.* People submit things they overhear and they're looking for someone to edit the items and write headlines for them.

My dad: And this is on the Internet?

Me: Yup.

My mom: I can't believe anyone would actually know about that, let alone that it would be a job.

I swear, it was an honor just to be a finalist
So a few weeks back Overheard at the Beach was looking for an editor. They posted 100 reader-submitted quotes (things that people had, ostensibly, overheard at the beach) and to apply for the job you had to pick 12-15 of them, edit them and write headlines for them. I sent in my 12-15 edited and headlined items along with my resume and a pretty fresh cover letter. I told them that my cat was probably dying and that I owed the vet a lot of money. (Seriously, what do you have to lose when you're applying for a job like this? You might as well at least try to be funny. And what's funnier than a dying cat?)

While I was waiting for a response I read some of the items and my headlines to my mom. She thought they were hysterical, by the way.

A week or so went by and sure enough, I got a really cool email saying I was one of the finalists for the job. The email was very flattering. I would seriously quote from it, but if I did it would seem like I was bragging. It was that nice.

The next phase was a timed test -- the finalists had to write ten headlines for ten items in 30 minutes. And since I'm the kind of person who thinks of the perfect thing to say 30 minutes after an exchange, I pretty much bombed. Another week went by and I got an email saying they decided to go another way. That letter was nice, too. Just not as nice as the letter saying I was a finalist.

So that was fun.

At least my mom still thinks I'm funny
But the weird thing is, now that the Beach site is up and running, I can see what the winning headlines were for the 100 items as they're posted. Some of them are waaaaay funnier than any of mine were. And some of them are just different than mine were.

One of my favorites was this item ... I love the headline they picked, too. Mine was "Funny, the same exact thing happened to my virginity."

My headline for this item was "It's either that or start a book club."

But some of them are just downright icky. For example, the very first one they posted happened to be one that I wrote a headline for:

Teen boy: . . . and you're so racist.

Teen girl: I'm really not.

Teen boy: It's okay. I find it sexy.

I wrote something like "You look so cute in that sheet and hood." The headline they ended up using goes another way. Ewwwwww. Right?

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*Which, of course, just in case anyone from work is reading this, I would do outside of my normal working hours.
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