April 4 was National Hug a Newsperson Day.

Judging by the number of people who visited my office in downtown Seymour that day, I am willing to wager no one knew it. To be truthful, I didn’t know it, either.

I do have to give my wife credit because she went to work that day and learned about National Hug a Newsperson Day from her boss, who offered me a hug. I politely declined.

To my knowledge, there wasn’t a stream of people offering me or anyone else in the newsroom any hugs that day. I don’t know about them, but that’s OK with me since I didn’t become a journalist expecting a bunch of hugs from anyone. I also didn’t become one because I planned on getting rich or I wanted to receive a lot of awards, although they are nice.

In fact, after nearly 37 years in the business, I sometimes find myself still questioning my decision to become a newsman in the first place.

I’m not complaining about the long hours with little pay or having to leave a family party in Indianapolis to go cover a fire in downtown Seymour on Christmas Day or vote counting issues that make for long election nights.

Or the almost constant stream of long meetings and event coverage (think the county fair and festivals) that is relatively unchanged from year to year. In fact, that can be the best part of the job. The only thing better is all of the free meals that come with many of those events.

I don’t like the almost constant stream of complaints about the work we do here at The Tribune, especially with the advent of social media, but it comes with the territory. Newspapers are tasked with generating the first version of history, which often changes in the following days. It also means we rarely get everything right, but neither do our sources.

After much reflection, I managed to put together a list of why I did make the decision to pursue a degree in journalism at what is now known as Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis back in the early 1980s.

My résumé up to that point included a summer or two serving as an usher at Indianapolis Indians game at what was then known as Bush Stadium; a year or so serving sweet treats from a Dairy Queen on the near west side of Indy; mixing and selling paint at three paint stores over the better part of a decade; a two-year stint making cakes, doughnuts, buns and bread at Kroger Bakery on the far east side of the city; and one year making pins for chains at Link Belt’s Ewart plant on South Belmont Avenue.

I enjoyed all of those jobs to some degree, but that last one might have been my favorite because it gave me a chance to work near my father and see what he did all of those years to put bread on the table. It was a hot, dirty place.

Then Link Belt laid me off and decided I needed to go back to school. IUPUI had just added a journalism program. I went on to become one of the first graduates of that school.

Reflecting on my career as a newsman, I have learned I like being a journalist in a small town for several reasons. First, everyone knows you, and secondly, you get the chance to give a lot of people their 15 minutes of fame. I think everyone deserves that no matter what they do or who they are if they want it.

Journalism also gives me the opportunity to learn a little something new every day.

And being a journalist also gives me the chance to do something I inherited from my father — the gift of gab. I think it’s that little bit of Irish blood he gave me. My wife tells me that sometimes, I talk too much and should listen more. I agree, but I just can’t help myself most of the time.

When I went to work for the Brownstown Banner in August 1986, life in Jackson County was a far cry from what it was in Indianapolis. There was far less crime here than there was in Naptown, and overall, people were just a lot nicer here.

More than three decades later, that has changed a lot, but Indy and Jackson County are still far different.

There’s more crime here now, however, and people are just not as nice to each other as they were back in those days.

I never like having to write about the bad things that happen in our community, especially when it involves someone harming an innocent child. Again, that comes with the territory.

I recently found at least a local place where you can still find civility here almost all of the time. That would be that little supermarket where you have to pay a quarter to get a cart and they don’t bag your groceries.

It amazes me that every time I go shopping at Aldi, someone has left the quarter in the cart for the next person or they want to give you a quarter for your cart. Or someone has bought too many bags and gives them to other shoppers. Or they give you an empty box they don’t need for their groceries. And it has happened to us here at Seymour’s Aldi and at those in other cities and towns we have visited.

It makes you wonder what might happen if people could be a little bit nicer more often.

Maybe we need a National Hug an Aldi Shopper Day.