FlamingText

Paper Route

  Up at 255 they have one of those yappy dogs that old people always have, a teensy, super high-strung terrier or somesuch. Cutesy name like "Rags" except it isn't "Rags," it's just something like that. I'm sure they tell me the dog's name every month when I go to collect from them but for the life of me I can't remember.

  Their house is an old-people house, with that odd white-doily cleanness and the TV that's always up REAL LOUD and the smell, of course. Old People Smell. I think people's sense of smell gets less acute as they get older, so maybe it's just that old people tolerate more pet smell than most people would or maybe it's a combination of that and some household cleanser they're using, which would at least explain why the place is always spotless in spite of the weird smell.

When I go to collect it's always the same scene. They're retired so they're pretty much always home. Somebody comes to the door, usually the wife, and she invites me in and then goes to get the money while her husband stays sitting on the couch watching Jimmy Swaggart or CHiPs or whatever. He looks over at me and makes small talk in a REALLY LOUD VOICE while the missus putters around getting exact change together. They're big on exact change. So I stand there awkwardly chatting with him about the weather and I have to repeat everything I say once or twice for his benefit. Meanwhile this skittish little dustmop is sniffing around my feet, clearly suspicious of the intruder in his realm.

  Another thing about old people is that a lot of them seem to want to hang out with you. Old ladies are always offering me lemonade and wanting to sit around talking about how I'm doing in school and what I want to be when I grow up, or else they want to tell me all about their own grown-up kids. It's not so bad really, but if I did my collecting that way it would take forever so I usually have to excuse myself in what feels like mid-conversation. Retired people have all the time in the world but I don't. Still, most of them are very nice and it's a mystery to me how the girls I go to school with now will someday wind up as sweet little old ladies like the ones on my route. I suspect that between here and there is a long and rocky road.

"I want you to know we appreciate you putting the paper in the mail slot. It really does make it a lot easier on us." she says as she brings me the money.

"DON'T GET AROUND LIKE WE USED TO." the husband chimes in cheerfully.

I of course tell her it's no trouble at all, lying.

  "Well, I wanted you to know we appreciate it." she adds as she hands me $5.46. The extra fifty cents is for putting the paper in the mail slot. I can tell she thinks it's a lot of money. Oh well, it's a nice gesture. It is a bit more work for me, having to walk up to the house every day and put the paper in the slot instead of just hucking it onto the porch from the street.

  Of course the main reason it's an extra effort is Rags, because every day when I lift the slot to put the paper through he comes tearing out onto the glassed-in porch and smashes into the aluminum door at full speed, barking his head off like he's gonna bust a blood vessel. The first couple times it happened I was pretty startled, naturally. After that I came to expect it, and I got to the point where I was playing little games with him, seeing how stealthy I could be in my approach and if I could get the paper in and be gone before Rags could make it out onto the porch. His little charges got to part of my daily routine, so much so that if on any given day Rags didn't nearly kill himself trying to get to me I'd wonder if he was sick or something. You get used to anything, I suppose.

  There was one day when I wasn't really ready, though. I must've been preoccupied thinking about school or girls or something, but for whatever reason I was a little slow on the draw. Rags had been lying in wait for me, having devised a strategy that would at last afford him a clean shot at the monster hand that came through the hole in the wall every day and dropped things into his house. The days of the Hand's reign of terror are at an end and it's all thanks to Rags! --I'm positive that's what the little brute was thinking as he snatched the paper out of my hands the instant it came poking through the slot. He had it clamped in his jaws and shook it like he'd gotten hold of a rat or something. He pretty much tore the paper to shreds. It was hilarious.

  So after that the old guy built this little metal shed to protect the area around the mail slot, and now little Rags bashes his head against the sides of that little tin box every day instead of against the front door. No doubt still dreaming of his big rematch with the Hand.

Posted by flamingbanjo at January 30, 2005 12:30 PM