Mommy can i please have a newspaper route?

so, i was reading Lyle's blog (i would make it a link but i don't know how to do it) and i was reminded of the crazy times I've had while delivering newspapers. This is what i think of when someone talks about delivering newspapers:

1. The Journal is a newspaper that nobody, especially college students, cares about. My brother once dumped a whole bag full of The Journal newspapers into a dumpster to win a race in delivering them and NONE OF THE CUSTOMERS CARED!!! i always wondered how he would deliver to 20 doors and beat me when i only had 8 doors to deliver to.

2. speaking of those 8 doors i delivered to, there was an old man that lived at one of the houses and he was always on his porch when i came by. When i would hand him the newspaper he would be kind enough to give me a quarter. well, this happened so much that i came to expect it. One day he wasn't on the porch, so i rang the doorbell and when he answered the door i gave him the newspaper and said, do you have my quarter? yes, I'm a selfish little girl, but who cares, i got my money!

3. Could the Journal even be considered to be a real newspaper?

4. Delivering the Daily Harold is way worse than delivering the Journal. I think i came to this conclusion because i didn't know that delivering newspapers was the worst job in the world when i was young and delivering the Journal.

5. black hands, black walls, and angry mom. we would fold the newspapers in the kitchen and by the time we finished folding them all our hands were as black as.....well, newspaper ink. then since we were kids, we had to touch all around the light switches to turn on and off lights. My mom would be mad because not only did she hate the newspaper routes, but I'm pretty sure she hated that we turned everything that we touched black.

6. Big brothers are mean. this isn't necessarily only related to newspaper routes, but i remember being teased relentlessly by my brothers whenever we had to deliver newspapers. i don't remember anything exactly, but i know it happened. i think I've blocked it from my memory subconsciously.

7. I wonder if a certain family noticed how often i accidentally threw the newspaper onto the roof and not onto the porch. oops! i wasn't ever strong enough to throw the newspapers overhand, especially Sunday editions, from the sidewalk to the porch. So, instead i would lob it underhanded. Now when someone does this, the newspaper makes a huge rainbow like arch on the way to its destination. a lot of the time, the roof above the porch was in the way of the path of the newspaper. I think at some point there were about 5 newspapers on the roof. Now these people are my next door neighbors. hehe.

8. Newspaper routes ruin every holiday! i remember having to deliver papers on thanksgiving and Christmas. what a way to ruin someones two favorite holidays. wake up at 6am to deliver papers. yuck! one year on Christmas when i had to deliver papers, i decided to peek downstairs at some of my presents. I saw an American Girl Doll i had wanted for a long time down there and no one was there to see my excitement. i was mad that the newspaper route made me lose out on the excitement of me finding it for the first time with everyone around. I still acted excited when we all went downstairs to find our gifts, but it just wasn't the same.

well, that's all that i can think of. now instead of naive kids delivering newspapers, it's ladies from down south driving their minivans delivering the newspapers. what has happened to our society?