No News is Good News

I am very very very very very very happy. I am about to quit the newspaper route that I share with my sister-in-law (she's quitting too.) Here's to quitting! Although this job has served a purpose (the acquiring of money), I wonder if it was worth it. But only because I am a burned-out shell of what I was when I started the route.

Not that there haven't been some good times. Like when people would hand us tips just for being the good little newspaper carriers that we were. Well...we tried to be. With a route of 250, a little AD/HD goes a long way. There were lots of special trips to deliver missed papers. Just about everybody on the route was spared a delivery at some point in the 4 months we have spent doing this.

Ah, the memories..... the yard alien.... with a squirrel on his shoulder. I am planning on taking a picture tomorrow, which I will then share with the world via my web site.

We were awarded non-working flashlights for new subscriptions we sold. Later, the same flashlights were offered to the general public in advertisements that promised a free flashlight with each new subscription. The line they used? "Don't get caught in the dark!"

That was followed by another remarkable advertising campaign featuring the "comic-strip umbrella." The caption: "Don't get caught in the rain!" Who thinks this stuff up?

Then there was the day that an old lady started screaming bloody murder as we drove by her house. I slowed down to see if she needed help. She came to her doorway and yelled, "I never did anything to you!" Then a man came to the door and waved us on. From then on, every time we delivered their paper, we'd say, "I never did anything to you!" But as it became more routine, it was more like, 383, check. I never did anything to you, check. 550, check.

There was the hellish special delivery of the Thanksgiving Edition - after midnight we realized (midway through the route) that we didn't have enough papers to finish. We went back to the loading dock, but nobody was there to help us out of our predicament (evidence that there were no Oompaloompas being held captive there, as it had seemed to me). We got up very early the next morning to finish the route.

I could go on, but I am sure you get the idea. I'm just not coming up with any particularly good memories. Maybe I should change the subject. Oh yeah - I'm very very very very very very happy.