Since there has been a fair amount of controversy on the lines you can and cannot cross with a source, here is a partial list of things I have probably done with sources.
Smoked cigarettes
Drank drinks
Slept in their van
Ate crab cakes (even though I’ve been a vegetarian for a decade) (even though I didn’t like crab cakes even when I wasn’t)
Took a (bad) photo of them in front of a statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan
Accosted Dusty Hill, bass player from ZZ Top, at some sort of … party?
Believed that they smoked crack on accident that one time
Watched a stupid football game on Thanksgiving
Hired a vital staff member
Pretended I had met someone I hadn’t
Invented a fairly believable scenario about meeting that person that wasn’t so much invented as stolen from someone who had actually met that person
Walked a dog
Agreed with him that, yes, that code enforcement guy was a total bitch
Let her pay for lunch even though I knew that was wrong and I felt bad about it, but I had gone to the restroom and she took care of it while I was gone, then I wrote a story that didn’t really make her look that great and it’s been almost 15 years and I still feel really bad about it and I always made sure to pay every single time
Didn’t tell anyone about that thing that time
Listened to their stupid band
Dreamed about a zebra that could play basketball and talk and no one thought it was that weird, even though in every other way the zebra behaved exactly like a wild zebra would (note: I did this with a source, but the source was probably not aware)
Drank from their bottle of red wine, even though I didn’t drink wine of any kind at the time, and there were no cups and I usually — well, I’m no germaphobe — but I like a little separation of church and state, if you know what I mean
the Kid ‘n’ Play kickstep
So many shots
