In the early 1990s, when I carried a White House pass as a correspondent for The Boston Globe, I had a seat in the briefing room. I did not spend much time there — neither did many administration officials. My desk was annexed by the photographers as a place to pile their coats.

My seat for the briefings was in the fifth row, which might as well have been Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. On those occasions when the president appeared, he’d work his way through the first two rows, making sure to call on the broadcast correspondents; the reporters from the papers of record and the keyed-up representatives of the wire service, where scoops get measured in seconds, not minutes. Rarely did the president take a question from the outback.

There I was — a few yards from the Oval Office — and no one would give me the story. President Bill Clinton walked by our window, down the famed colonnade, to his office each morning. Had I screamed, he would have heard me. At times, in frustration, I thought about it.

It was different when it was my turn to be the pool reporter. It got me through the doors to the Oval Office, onto Air Force One. A few times a year, I had a seat at ringside. But it was an all-or-nothing affair. The price was endless, mindless hours in a holding room, a hotel hallway or a White House van. Boredom made you loopy. Here’s an actual pool report I filed:

The president jogged at Fort McNair

Of him we saw not hide nor hair

They parked our vans outside the gate

And that is where they made us wait

We shivered outside, we ink-stained wretches

While Potus did his jog and stretches …

Those who braved the morning fog will

Forgive this bit of wretched doggerel ...

Which is not to say we didn’t work hard. I wrote 380 articles one year and was honored by my peers. But when I brought that up while haggling for a raise, my editors scoffed and compared me — accurately, I admit — to a middle linebacker: A lot of plays just came my way.