Nobody can ever accuse me of lacking professional enthusiasm.
I love the Wellington Advertiser so much now I deliver it. Lock up your pooches, clear the walkways and close your housecoats, because I’m coming to a doorstep near you. Meet your newest newspaper carrier.
Well, according to the newly signed contract, my two children are the actual carriers. Yeah, right. Perhaps I should explain what “legally binding” means to my junior achievers. For now, I am fully aware that I just fell for the ultimate kid-manipulation move and those two rascals of mine know it. Let the games begin.
Basically, I followed through on a threat. That’s what every parent is supposed to do, right? It’s all about the follow through. If a parent threatens to take the television away because children are lying around instead of doing their chores, you must actually disconnect the television (hoping they aren’t smart enough to reconnect the wires).
So after a beautiful Saturday afternoon where the children found the boob-tube more interesting than say, a bike ride in the fresh outdoors or the task of putting their clean, folded laundry away in their own dresser drawers, I snapped. I lost it. I told them to get a job.
When I remembered that child labour is illegal in this country, I told them I was getting them a paper route. What they needed was responsibility and I was going to sign them up. My children put their laundry away. They swept the floor and raked some leaves too. I felt vindicated. I let the paper route threat go.
What a fool. The very next day, the children were lumps on the sofa while the Carpenter and I were hard at work doing manual labour. My threat needed to become reality. By recess on Monday morning, my children had their paper route (insert evil laughter here).
Perhaps I was overzealous, but since our newspaper delivery person had left the post the week prior, we were without our newspaper. That meant entire neighbourhoods would be without their community newspaper. The over achieving do-gooder in me could not have that.
Besides, the Carpenter is moody without his Wellington Advertiser. No newspaper means no flyers, and no flyers means, well, no flyers. How would the world spin on if the Carpenter didn’t know what the price of chicken is at all three local grocery chains, or worse still, what if Canadian Tire had a sale on something we don’t need but desperately want? We’re not saving that funny paper money for nothing, I realize. Flyers help us save money and then spend it. It’s a life balance thing, you see.
You’re thinking the Carpenter eagerly waits to read my column, aren’t you? No. He saves me to the last read. And guess who hands him his newspaper? Yep, this week’s carrier. You can imagine how much sarcastic pleasure he gets from that. After the first day’s work, I wrote the boss and warned I was going to form an elementary school carriers union. The first contract demand? Golf carts.
Until that is met, I will strap a canvas carrier bag over my shoulder and stuff my column into mailboxes and doorways in my ’hood. Wait until I tell the children what my cut of their pay is (insert more evil laughter).