I never had a paper route. Not in the get paid sense. But my brother Matt did for the better part of a year, when I was in grade school. And he was bigger than me, and he was a giant a-hole. He used to make me wake up at 3:30 a.m. We'd drive to the parking lot in front of the TG&Y in South Oklahoma City and pick up bundles of the Daily Oklahoman, along with the other chain-smoking, halter-topped People of the Night. Special breed, they were.
I remember banding hundreds of papers until my knuckles rubbed raw. We'd drive around the 'hood in my mom's station wagon, which somebody from the church bought us at a state vehicle auction. They had removed the DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS stickers from both sides, but the paint where the stickers had been hadn't faded, so you could still make it out. And the back doors wouldn't open from the inside.
He'd drive and I'd throw. And sometimes I'd just throw, meaning I paid no attention to numbers on curbs, especially at the various clusters of duplexes. Thinking back, I probably boosted circulation in that section of town quite a bit. Eventually Matt quit the route, or got fired, and my grades went back up.
He still owes me. Or maybe I owe him.
This reminded me of those mornings.
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