This is a story about the most magical three seconds of my life.
I grew up in the suburbs of a mid-size city.
In those days—the 80s and 90s—even a moderately sized city could support two daily newspapers. (It barely supports one now.)
Where I lived, there was a morning newspaper that was delivered by a guy in a car who would stick the paper in your mailbox. And there was a competing evening newspaper that was delivered by paperboys and girls onto your front porch.
From the ages of 13-15 or so, I was the paperboy for the route in my neighborhood.
That meant every late afternoon/early evening I had to sling a bag across my body and deliver the paper to all the subscribers along one of the roads that looped around my neighborhood.
It took about 40 minutes and was a mostly pleasant experience, assuming the weather cooperated.
The worst part of the job was Sunday mornings. The only Sunday newspaper in town was published by the paper I delivered. But people don’t want their Sunday paper in the evening. They want it when they wake up. So, on Sunday mornings at, like, 5:00 am, gigantic stacks of newspapers would be dumped on my driveway. I would have to drag them into the house, assemble them, and then deliver them in the wee hours.
The Sunday newspapers were huge. They weighed a few pounds each. You couldn’t carry them all in a bag on your body. Instead, there was a hand truck you’d use and wheel around the road. It wasn’t fun. On days when it was raining or the streets were covered with sloppy, melting snow, and you had to deliver the paper while also trying to keep it dry, it genuinely sucked.
But that was just one day a week.
Most of the time it was a carefree walk through a neighborhood that was loaded with kids and friends.
The weirdest part of the job was called “collecting.”
If you’re under the age of… say, 35, this is going to sound batshit crazy to you.
I was a paperboy in the 90s. Online payments weren’t a thing yet. But Credit cards existed. Checks existed.
So how did people pay for their newspaper subscriptions?
The paperboy would go around the neighborhood every week, knock on people’s doors, and collect the money in cash. DOES THAT SOUND LIKE AN EFFICIENT SYSTEM TO YOU??
I don’t really get it. But that’s how it worked. I’d knock on your door every Tuesday or Wednesday night and collect the $3.80 you owed for the paper that week.
Most people would give me $4 and let me keep the 20 cents change. Some would let me keep the change on a $5. They were the high-rollers. Some would actually want their 20 cents back. Even at 14 years old I pitied those people.
Anyway, collecting was my favorite part of the job. It took me forever to get that done each week. In a given week, half the houses wouldn’t just pay, but they’d also invite me in for a while. Maybe have a bite to eat, some dinner or dessert. Play a video game. Watch something on TV. Help them move a dresser (I probably made more money doing little tasks for these people than I did delivering the paper.) Or just chat for a bit.
Most of the houses in my neighborhood had kids, but I wasn’t always spending time with kids. I’d hang out with some kids, but also many adults who found me entertaining, and a few elderly people who enjoyed having someone to talk to. I’d socialize with anyone pretty much.
My route circled around to a dead end that went into a wooded area through which we would ride our dirt bikes.
The last house on the road where it met the dead end belonged to the Lowe’s. This wasn’t a house I was ever invited into. I just got the money and left. It was purely transactional.
The Lowe’s were a man in his 40s and his daughter who was about four years old.
Every time I would come collecting, his daughter would answer the door, then run to get her dad.
Victoria, the four-year-old daughter was very sweet, but there was something unsettling about her.
She didn’t have “cute” child-like features. She had the features of an attractive older woman, just on a smaller human being. (And no, this isn’t some story about a dwarf pretending to be a child.)
To be clear, I wasn’t attracted to her. She was a little kid. But it was obvious she would probably grow up to be a beautiful woman. (Anyone who can’t differentiate between these two thoughts and says something to me like—“Oh man, you were attracted to a four-year-old!”—is someone I don’t trust around kids. They’ve only got one mode of thinking.)
One day, I went collecting at the Lowe’s house. I rang the bell and Victoria answered. She opened the front door and greeted me, then she shut the door partway. A moment later she opened it again and—like a magic trick—she had transformed into a piping hot 25-year-old woman. She was about 5’8”, thin but curvy, and blond. A real 1990s fox. The features that were striking but out of place on her as a four-year-old, were now just stunningly gorgeous on this grown woman.
My mind was blown.
It was the most amazing three seconds of my life.
Then rational thought started creeping back in a moment later: “This is probably someone else, not the little girl magically transformed.” (In my memory they were even wearing matching outfits, making the transformation all the more perfect, but I think I just made that up in my head.)
I would learn this was Victoria’s mother. I thought she was out of the picture. But no, she lived there the whole time. Somehow her presence had escaped the notice of the horn-ball teenage boys who lived in the area. It may have been because the house was set back near a dead end. But the larger reason was that she didn’t leave the house much. Mr. Lowe kept his much younger wife in the house, apparently, as much as possible.
Why was I seeing her now? Well, because Mr. Lowe had just been sent to prison for a couple years for not paying his taxes.
The first time I collected my $3.80 from her, she invited me in and we had a little chat.
The next week I came there and she took me over to the couch and cried about her husband and her situation for 30 minutes. It might seem super weird that she was opening up to a teenager, but she had married very young and had lived a very sheltered life. We felt more like peers. If anything I was the more confident and self-possessed one.
It became something I could count on every week, these conversations with her. She’d always invite me in and we’d talk for 20 minutes, at least. Sometimes much longer.
“This chick likes me!’ I said to myself. But even at that age, I had the insight to know that was unlikely. She was a ravishing 25-year-old woman. I was a 15-year-old. Yes, most people thought I was 17 or 18. And sure, I did have decent calves from lugging around a newspaper bag every day—you can’t deny that. But I was obviously not in her league.
And then…
One week I stopped by and she answered the door in a bath towel that just barely covered the areas it needed to cover. Her daughter was away, staying with her grandmother for the night.
She invited me in. She didn’t say, “I’ll just change real quick.” Or, “Let me throw on a robe.” Instead, she sat with me on the couch as usual. At this point, the towel wasn’t quite covering everything it needed to, so she crossed her legs to maintain some decency.
Then, as our conversation went on, she uncrossed her legs.
But that’s a story for another time.
I mention this as a prelude to this announcement:
Much like I was 30 years ago, I am going back to an afternoon delivery schedule.
Typically I schedule posts to go up in the middle of the night here on the east coast of the US. That means they’re available relatively early for Jerx: Europe. And pretty much first thing in the morning for Jerx: America. But that’s going to change. Starting in February, posts will appear in the afternoon. I’m not sure if there will be an exact time every day or not. I’ll let you know as I feel it out. There’s a reason for this move, but it’s not interesting. It’s just going to help me with some other things scheduling-wise.
So if reading this site was part of your morning routine, you may need to change it to be part of your evening wind-down. Settle into your favorite chair. Have your dog bring you your slippers and iPad. Pour yourself a brandy or a glass of Papa John’s Garlic Sauce (whichever you prefer). And dive into The Jerx as the sun sets.
