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Engineers love to torture journalists. They don’t mean to do this. They probably don’t even realize they’re doing it. It’s just the nature of their industry.

Last night at the ACEC Oregon Excellence in Engineering Awards, for example, someone from an engineering consulting firm was telling our table about a project he’s working on. Interesting stuff. Juicy stuff. The stuff of which compelling newspaper project stories are made. Until he threw out this line: “But we really can’t talk about it just yet.”

Even though my byline dreams came skidding to a halt, I smiled and nodded and said, “Sure. I understand. So, um, when do you think you will be able to talk about it?”

But what I was really thinking was: How about you just grab your butter knife and rip my chest open, and then take that shaker of salt and sprinkle it liberally in the wound?

In other words, there’s nothing worse than dangling a story in front of a journalist and then snatching it away just as said journalist is nonchalantly (so as not to attract a lot of attention) reaching for a pen and a napkin to start scribbling notes.

Or to put it in terms those with a mathematical bent, such as engineers, might better understand: Door bell is to one of Pavlov’s dogs as juicy project without the okay to move ahead with a story is to a journalist.

That doesn’t mean I don’t want engineers to keep dangling their projects in front of me.  Just know that if I wander away before you finish talking, it probably isn’t because I’m bored. There’s a good chance that somewhere in the distance, someone just rang a doorbell.