I think I killed Gerald Ford

In the newspaper business, we have slightly morbid senses of humor; it comes with the territory of dealing with too much death and destruction on a daily basis. We also tend to be somewhat superstitious folk -- you never say the night is going smoothly lest some major news break. One of the biggest things that can happen is the death of someone famous. Some are easy to handle -- James Brown's death this week was early enough in the day that we could plan it right from the start of our night. But people who die late in the night (or at least whose deaths we are notified of late in the night) tend to cause a great deal more chaos, as pages have to be ripped up, stories replaced, layouts changed, etc. -- all on deadline.

I explain all of this so you can try to understand why it's sort of a running joke that whenever we figure big news will happen, we turn to Gerald Ford. He's a former president so it's obviously huge news and, until earlier tonight, he had been the longest-living one. He's also had a lot of health problems, so it seemed likely his time would come sooner, rather than later.

Consequently, you will often hear comments such as this:
"OK, well, I'm going home for the night. If Ford dies, call me."
or
"Not a lot of news out there, so keep an eye out for Ford."

You get the point. With this in mind, let me re-create the scene at work at about 9:45 earlier tonight:

I was getting some fresh air with a friend when I said:
"Our night's going really smoothly, knock on wood. So ... I expect Ford will die any moment now."

Fast forward to 11:50 p.m., 10 minutes before our deadline.

A news alert moves across the wires: Former President Ford has died.

Wacky hijinks ensue.

Now, I'm guessing it took some time after his death before the announcement was made public. This leads me to believe that it is entirely possible that moments after I uttered the words "I expect Ford will die any moment now" that Ford did, in fact, die.

Man, I hope this isn't the superpower I was waiting to have manifest this year.