My weekly allowance just wasn’t cutting it. So when Mr. Young, the mountainous, ebullient distributor of our Syracuse Herald Journal, mentioned that he was looking for a paper carrier for a route close to my home, I jumped at the chance. “What do I have to do?”

Mr. Young explained that I would be responsible for delivering the evening paper 6 days a week, and then the Sunday morning paper as well, to the paper’s 25 customers in the development just across the highway. For my troubles, I would collect approximately 7 cents per daily paper, and 22 cents per Sunday paper. The logical half of my 7^th grade brain told me not to bother with 20 bucks a week for 10 hours of pushing my bike up and down hills with a sack full of papers over my shoulder. The greedy half of my brain reminded me that it was twice my allowance, and I was too young to get a better paying job anywhere else. “Of course, you can grow the route, too,” he encouraged, his big toothy smile promising untold riches.

I wanted to see just how big the route was before I would commit. So Mr. Young admitted me into the sanctum of his red stake body truck (when I think back today about how willingly I climbed into a stranger’s truck to go off God knows where, I’m glad I grew up when I did) and drove me over to Southfield Manor. We rolled slowly over the hilly streets, avoiding the neighborhood kids at play, greeting residents, and stopping at each customer’s mailbox so Mr. Young could show me who was on the route and flop the paper in the box. A few of the neighbors were curious about the little tomboy sitting in Mr. Young’s truck; he introduced me to them as “my new papergirl”. That seemed to amuse them; this was the 70s, after all, and they’d never had a paper GIRL before. Each time Mr. Young introduced me, I felt a surge of pride. I’d been hired! Even if I hadn’t actually agreed to take the job yet. At least from what I could tell the papers were thin. And the job looked simple; I could move almost as fast on my bike as Mr. Young did in his truck.

When we got back home, Mr. Young asked me if I wanted the job. Feeling like a celebrity, itching to have my own hard-earned money, I grabbed the opportunity. Only one obstacle remained… Mom and Dad’s permission.

“Are you going to be able to do this every day?” Dad asked, suspiciously.

“Of course.”

“Are you going to go collecting?” he pressed shrewdly.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well… okay then.  But it’s your responsibility.  Don’t expect your Mom and me to do it for you.”

Mr. Young’s final words to me that day hinted that my glamorous, gender-bending enterprise was going to be harder than I thought. “I’ll drop the papers off for you on the corner. Since you’re the paper girl and your customers are paying you for service, you’ll need to go the doors and drop the papers off at the door. If you’re sick or can’t deliver on a particular day, find a sub, or call me by 1:30. Do you remember which houses we went to?”

“Sure,” I said confidently, eager to impress him with my fabulous memory.

“Great!  Your collection envelope comes every Friday. You’ll need to get it the money to me by Tuesday to get credit for that week.” Credit?  What was that? I’d parse it all out later.  I nodded.

Mr. Young shook my hand – wow! - and handed me a dirty gray bag with a long, thick strap. SYRACUSE HERALD-JOURNAL fanned out across it in faded red block letters. “Welcome aboard,” he bellowed. That was it!  No I-9 or withholding forms to fill out, no social security numbers (I didn’t even have one yet), no background or reference checks, no pee tests, nothing. Just the promise of a 12-year-old. No wonder Mr. Young was bald.

The next afternoon I waited at the top of the hill at 4:00, stomach churning, for my first batch of papers to arrive. People might TALK to me.  Worse yet, people might SEE me make mistakes. What had I been thinking?!

Mr. Young’s red truck rounding the corner abruptly interrupted my panic. I couldn’t back out now. When he pulled up and jumped out of the stake body, a stack of papers bursting from his arms, his big smile reassured me.  I could do this. If he trusted me with his papers, surely I must be capable. (I am sure, looking back on that day now, that he was just relieved to see me show up.) Mr. Young cut the wires that bound the papers and roared off.  “Have fun!”

It was only after he left that I discovered the bag wouldn’t hold all of the papers, so I’d have to leave a stack there on the corner, do half the route, and come back. (Another simple gesture for the times, which today would be fraught with peril.) Ugh.. That damn bag really hurt my neck, too. Ouch. Have fun?! And how on earth was I going to pedal when I couldn’t even keep the handlebars straight, with this damn bag hanging down below my knees? More papers were ejected from the bag. Now I’d have to make two trips. Thank god this was the evening paper; I couldn’t imagine doing it in the morning before school. Huffing and puffing, anxiety forgotten in my eagerness to unload my stash, I limped around what I thought was the route, trudging up sidewalks and dropping papers in the doorways. Truthfully, I could barely remember who was supposed to get a paper, and who wasn’t. After an hour, I didn't even care. Some of my new customers smiled; others scowled. Two thirds of the way through the route, I discovered that I shared my father's allergy to newsprint. And I was out of papers. What did that mean?  Oh well.  I guessed no more papers just meant I was done. I went home, sneezing and wheezing and vaguely troubled.

The phone calls to Mr. Young started that night.

“I didn’t get a paper.” 

“Where’s my paper?”

“I’ve never missed a day in twenty years; that stupid girl just ruined my whole week. And what was she doing at the Harringtons'?  I happen to know they get the Post, not the Herald. She must have given them mine."

(Nobody, including the Harringtons themselves, called to complain that they shouldn’t have gotten a paper, of course.)

Mr. Young brought me a record of customers that the last paperboy had kept – which hadn’t been updated – and patiently offered to go over the route with me again. I decided I hated my new job. But quitting never crossed my mind. And anyway, I hated my homework even more.

I straightened the route out by Thursday and had a routine – if not a comfortable one, at least it was manageable. I had also acquired a permanent bruise and rash on my neck from the damn bag, and cuts on my fingers from the wires that bound the paper. But it was a job, my very first, and I was pretty much unsupervised.

On Friday my collection envelope showed up. It said I owed Mr. Young $65.47. I just muttered at it and stuffed it in my pocket. Collection was a whole new routine. I didn’t understand it. I’d worry about it later.

On Sunday I found out what true suffering was. The Sunday papers were delivered at 5:30 AM. I was expected to finish my route by 7. The papers were five times as thick, and I had twice as many customers. I could only fit 7 papers in the bag or so.  By the time I was halfway through my route, people were standing in their driveways waiting. I finally straggled home at 9:30.

“Do any collecting?” Mom quipped, observing me over her cup of coffee. I waved her off and stumbled back to bed.

“Aren’t you going to go collecting?” Dad asked me two weeks later. Beg for money?!  I wasn’t ready for that. They all hated me. The bill was only $180, anyway.

“Having any problems collecting?” Mr. Young asked me after a few more weeks had gone by.  Now the bill was at $290. Problems? Not me.

Three months later, when the bill I owed Mr. Young had topped $600, I was summoned to a Meeting in the Dining Room. Mr. Young appeared, pink and nervous, and solemnly presented the Numbers to my parents and me. The tribunal of adults quizzed me carefully, as if I were a time bomb, or worse – a thief. Had I been collecting? I had not. Did I understand that I had never been paid, since I never collected? Didn’t I want to get my hands on tips, too? I was too scared of ASKING FOR MONEY to worry about such trivia as getting paid. Did I know Mr. Young would have to pay this money out of pocket if I didn’t collect it for him?  I did not. Up until then, the spiraling numbers that appeared on paper each week were just figures. It was just paper I was pushing, after all. But the pulsing vein in my Mom’s forehead and Dad’s promise to personally oversee my collections made my debt dangerously real.

After my trial, Dad made good on his promise and hauled me out in the car twice a week for three weeks to get my collections up to date. I was petrified. Sweat poured from my body as I rang each doorbell and presented a bill. I was convinced my angry customers would revolt and refuse to pay. I probably looked like a rabbit in the fox hole. I was sure I would be shot on sight.

To my utter surprise, in spite of some well-justified grumbles over an average bill of $17, my customers all paid up over time.  “Hallelujah,” said one with a wink. “We’ve been wondering when you’d show up.  Keep ‘em coming.” One woman even told me I was cute. (Having been routinely told by my classmates how ugly I was, I just gaped at her, resolved that she was crazy, and avoided the house forever afterward, approaching to collect only when I knew her husband would answer the door.) Some of my customers even TIPPED me. Wow! Now I remembered why I did this in the first place. Mr. Small, whose house had the steepest stairs, who allowed an inch of untreated ice to cover them in the wintertime, tipped me a quarter. But Mr. Patton, who always met me at the door with a big smile and a kind word, tipped me a whole TEN DOLLARS.

I started collecting a lot more often after that. And the rest of my career as a paper girl went smoothly... especially when my folks generously devised a system for getting the Sunday paper done much more quickly. One of them (usually Mom) drove me around the neighborhood with a stack of papers in the front seat of our little Chevette, while I ran from door to door. And they never even asked to split my tips.

These days, I get up every morning, read my paper, and generate my freelance invoices whenever I can. When customer accounts get past due, I march right up and request payment. Most clients don’t tip me anymore; then again, my e-mail delivery route is a lot more comfortable than a bag and a bike. But I'd give anything to see my Mom and Dad on Sunday mornings like I used to, instead of once or twice a year. Oh, how the world has changed.

Of course, people don’t change quite as easily or quickly as technology does. My weekly allowance still doesn’t cut it. As I open my credit card bill every month, the spiraling numbers create a familiar twist in my gut. It’s just plastic and paper each month, but the word "collections" carries an ominous new meaning. Do I know how much more interest I end up paying in the end?  I do. Do I know society will end up shouldering the burden of my debt if I got myself into a situation where I couldn’t pay it off?  I do. The pulsing vein in my Mom’s forehead has become mine. Perhaps I’d be better at balancing the numbers if my parents were still looking over my shoulder. I hear, often, that dependence on our parents is the bane of my generation. But at least I've triumphantly avoided collections so far without their help. Problems? Not me.

As I sit here typing at the keyboard, the movement of a girl striding to the front door through the rain catches my eye. Dirty blonde hair is hanging in her eyes, ancient jeans look like they’re ready to bolt and run, and she looks resentful as hell. When I answer the door to her ring, she stares at her feet.

“I’m collecting from the Post,” she mutters.

“How much do I owe you?” I ask. I wonder if she had to have a security clearance to get hired. Her parents probably had to sign their lives away for her to get the job, to protect the paper from lawsuits. How many court orders might I myself have generated on my first delinquent day if I'd been born twenty years later?

She flips through her book. “Two fifty.”

Two weeks. She's good. “You take credit cards?” I ask.

She gapes at me. “Uh… you have to call the office for that…”

I smile, wave my hand at her. “Never mind.  Hang on a sec.”

Retrieving my wallet, I consider the ten, then reach for twenty in change. I can tell by her blush that her heart is crashing in her ears as she hands me a receipt for two bucks fifty; she pretends not to count my tip with her trembling fingers.

Twenty dollars isn’t what it used to be when I was her age, and no amount of money makes a grown-up cool to a twelve-year-old. I won’t tell her she’s cute, even though she is. I won’t bore her with my story, like I’ve probably bored you. But now I understand why my customers smiled at me back then, and why they didn’t mind paying me when I let their bills run up, why some tipped me, and even why some didn’t. In this stressed-out hyped-up last-times world where bad news plagues our every step, where we are reminded daily about all the horrors lurking around every corner waiting to destroy our children, where fear over our collective future has hit epidemic proportions, where every service is automated… a fresh-faced kid who shows up for a job every day to deliver a newspaper to your door is like the rainbow over Noah’s ark. Those paper girls and boys, pushing their bikes, trudging along with their loads, shouldering the burdens of independence and responsibility before they fully know what they're getting themselves into, those junior entrepreneurs paying their dues today are the light of our future. The dreams that lie behind their big eyes recall the dreams that some my age have found since our paper route days, and dreams that the rest of us still seek. Hallelujah, kids. Keep ‘em coming.
 

© 2006 Melissa Cross.  All rights reserved.  No part of this piece may be reproduced without the express permission of the author.