Let me start off with a spoiler. There is nothing too crazy in here. Most of the crazy, starts in my twenties, but I figured I should start at the beginning.
I believe I was nine when my brother broke his clavicle. He had a daily paper route at the time. Rather than allowing him to lose his job, my mother had me fill in for him while he recovered. There I was pushing a grocery cart, that I assume someone in the house "borrowed" all around the neighborhood delivering very thick newspapers daily to the local subscribers, as well as the even heavier Sunday paper, and collecting their weekly payments. Now that I think about this, it makes me laugh that I got my start in the media industry!
By the time summer was over, my brother had healed and he took his route back. However, I wanted to continue to make my own money. I was not old enough to deliver "papers", but I was old enough to deliver weekly Penny Savers. Did everyone have those? I have a very vague memory of a man dropping off inserts and plastic bags to our house at 5am, the living room being turned into an assembly line as I rolled up the inserts in a required order, and stuffed them into the long plastic bags, and making something like 2 cents a paper. Sometimes, I made my deliveries by bike, but the best part was when my sister, who was eight years older than me, and already living outside our house, would come over with her very loud, very old, very used, truck and would drive me around my route. I would sit in the back and just hurl the papers out the window. Some would land on the stoop, some would land on the lawn, some would land in a bush, or the gutter, and some would fly out of the bag altogether. I know I shouldn't say this, but it was so much fun! It was time with my big sister back then that I cherished, and still do.
I kept the Penny Saver route for a couple of years. Eventually, they stopped letting kids do this work. I wonder why!
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