Does anybody still use paperboys? You know, teenage kids who ride around on their bikes and deliver the daily newspaper, coming to your door once or twice a month to demand their two dollars! (Bonus points for anyone who gets that last dollar movie reference). These days we get the paper delivered daily, but it comes at like 6 a.m. and is delivered by some guy driving in his car who literally tosses the papers out of his car window and tries his best to hit our front stoop. But it got me wondering if anybody anywhere still uses paperboys?
Growing up, I never held the position, but my best buddy and next door neighbor Ethan did for a few years. I remember coming home from school (probably junior high?), hanging out to talk with him and even helping him open up the bundles of papers on his driveway. Then he'd toss a slew of them into his paperboy canvas bag, hop on his bike and ride around the neighborhood to deliver the latest news (at like 3 o'clock in the afternoon). Sometimes I'd join him to keep him company. Same goes with the few times a month he'd walk door to door to collect his pay. But Ethan (sorry bud) got a bit, well, lazy. As time went on, he wouldn't get right off the bus and get to work. We'd talk. We'd play Nintendo. It'd be almost dinner time and he'd remember he had to get his deliveries out. So yeah, I guess I can see why he didn't last forever at that job.
But in today's plugged-in, news-by-the-second society that we're in, I know for a fact that magazine and newspaper subscriptions are down. Way down. And I've got to imagine that for those who do get it, they need to get it first thing in the morning, and not at 2 or 3 in the afternoon when kids come home from school. Which is why I'm guessing there aren't too many paperboys mulling about anymore. Though I'm sure there are plenty of areas out there where they do get that work ethic going. Anyone out there have a paperboy riding around their neighborhood these days, keeping a great old tradition alive?
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One Response to “Have Bike Will Travel”
No paper boys here. The paper gets delivered by car between 3:00 - 5:00 AM. And most people have the newspaper boxes attached to their regular mailboxes (or they have the mailboxes with a built-in newspaper slot) so the carriers don't have to throw the paper to your doorstep.