Reviled

A few days ago, Kruse and Sullivan and I were sitting around drinking Blue Moons and talking about the stories we'd written that readers loved the most. The conversation reminded me of a story with the opposite distinction: among thousands I've written in my career, it's by far the most universally hated.

About a dozen readers e-mailed and called me about the story. No one had anything remotely nice to say.

It happened about two years ago, when I was writing for the Florida Times-Union. I was assigned to cover a space shuttle landing at Cape Canaveral. Problem is, the shuttle never landed. A lot of people might have chosen to bag the whole thing, but I decided to sit down at my laptop and spend an hour or two writing what I had seen.

Here's how it came out:

Second try was disappointing, too

Palm Beach resident made two trips to cape to view Discovery landing.

BY THOMAS LAKE

August 10, 2005

They called Josh Girdley a strikeout machine. In high school he once struck out 29 hitters in a single 10-inning game -- including two four-strikeout innings -- but his team lost when a reliever walked in the winning run.

Girdley is 24 now, out of baseball with an injured shoulder after six years in the minors. But his disappointment continued on Tuesday when the space shuttle Discovery found a new destination.

He and his friend Randy Rodecki came up from Palm Beach County early Monday morning to see Discovery land at Kennedy Space Center across the Indian River, losing six hours of potential sleep for nothing when clouds blocked the shuttle's touchdown.

The friends tried again on Tuesday morning, only this time with a twist: They loaded a black leather couch into the bed of Girdley's hulking pickup truck so they could watch the landing in style.

But Rodecki took a deep cut to the finger in the process, and he went to the emergency room. Girdley went north anyway, with his girlfriend's mother driving his truck because he was drunk.

They got to the parking lot of Paul's Smokehouse on U.S. 1 about 4:25 a.m., Girdley and his girlfriend, 16-year-old Elizabeth Rohaidy and her mother, Liana Vobarganas, and his dog, Ace, and the lights of the Space Center shone over the river. Stars twinkled in clear skies overhead, but lightning flashed on the eastern horizon.

They stood in the grass near the river until Vobarganas stepped in a fire-ant bed.

"Do you feel them anywhere?" Rohaidy asked.

"Baby," said her mother, "they already crawled up my leg!"

Girdley lifted her to the bed of the truck so she could sit safely on the couch.

"I haven't been carried like this since I was a baby," she said.

The ants got Rohaidy between her fingers.

"Why do they exist?" she wondered aloud. "They have no purpose."

Girdley smoked a cigarette and held a bottle of Mountain Dew, reminiscing about his baseball career and pointing a red laser into space. He noticed moss growing on two palm trees by the river.

"They need to clean those palm trees," he said.

"I shoulda brought my damn telescope tonight."

Lightning flickered red beyond the runway. A man on the radio said the shuttle had been diverted to California.

"We're done," Girdley said. "We're leavin'. We're goin' home."

He could not hide his discouragement.

"It sucks when you drive two hours one way to see something that could possibly happen once in a lifetime," he said. "At least they're gonna come home safe."

He was right. Four hours later, Discovery made a perfect landing in the California desert.

***

Looking back now, I can see that the story has a wicked combination of what frustrates readers: anticlimax, odd and inexplicable behavior by the protagonist, and the casual mention of a relationship that most people would find inappropriate. Oh well: That's what I had.

How about y'all? Anyone else want to talk about a story that turned everyone off?