I got that rare opportunity last night - at least for a newspaper editor.
I stood in a banquet room at the Drexelbrook packed with more than 600 people - almost all of whom were showering praise on the newspaper.
Unless you do what I do for a living, you don't know just how unusual that is.
The occasion was the annual Partners in Education Dinner, put on by the Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union and Delaware County Intermediate Unit.
At the banquet, the All-Delco Hi-Q team is honored, as well as all the great kids who take part in the nation's oldest scholastic quiz competition. That would include the Garnet Valley High School Hi-Q team. They weren't satisfied with winning the county crown. They went on to take the national title as well.
Also honored are the 19 teachers honored with the Excellence in Teaching Awards.
We had featured the two groups in the newspaper on Sunday and Monday, including the lead spot on our front page.
As I do almost every year, I planned to talk about one of the biggest struggles I have in this job, that being this notion of good news and bad news.
So of course the very first person I encounter when I walk into the room was Ridley Superintendent Dr. Lee Ann Wentzel, who was chatting with Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union boss John Unangst.
Nothing like putting my words into practice.
I wondered what kind of reaction I was going to get from Dr. Wentzel. After all, Ridley had found itself on the front page of yesterday's newspaper, and not in a positive way.
As usual, Dr. Wentzel could not have been nicer. She even quipped that we used a different photo of the high school than the last time we visited this story.
"We knew what day it was, we knew it was coming," she said. Wentzel understands what many people do not, that I have a job to do, and that includes showing both the good and bad in our communities.
During my speech, I also talked about last week's incident at Monsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast High School, in which several student wound up facing drug charges, and a loaded gun was found inside the school.
The following day, I wrote an editorial saying the story actually had a silver lining, that being the actions of a student who informed school officials that the student had returned to the building - with the gun.
Later that afternoon, I got a call from a parent, a Bonner alum and a father who would be sending his daughter to Prendie next year.
He had a very interesting question. First, he suggested we used the wrong word when referred to "several" students facing drug charges after contraband was found in their lockers. There were in fact two.
Then he mentioned something that I can admit I had not thought of.
He wondered why the story focused on the two lockers where drugs were found, instead of the fact that nothing was found in the rest of the student lockers after a sweep by police and K-9 crews.
It's a good question. The answer is one a lot of people don't like to hear. When people are doing what they are supposed to do, that isn't news. It becomes when they do something they aren't supposed to do.
But I respected his opinion, and it certainly gave me food for thought.
So did last night.
It's one of my favorite nights of the year.
I will forever be grateful to Unangst and Harry Jamison, the longtime head of the Delaware County Intermediate Unit. They are the ones who first approached me 12 years ago with the idea of an All-Delco Hi-Q team fashioned after the popular All-Delco teams we name after every high school sports season.
There are good stories out there. You just have to look for them.
I met about 600 of them last night.
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