The pains of being a paperboy

My first job was as a paperboy when I was 12 years old. The route was a few streets in my neighborhood, and I earned almost nothing, like $5 a week.

One of the papers I had to deliver was for a little farm that existed at the dead end of one of the streets. There was a mailbox where the street ended and their dirt driveway began, so I just left it in there.

These people would never pay their tab, so I would constantly have to walk up their dirt driveway to hit them up for money. This sucked because the driveway was like a tenth of a mile long, and it was full of farm clutter.

Most of the time that I would knock on the farmhouse door, the grandma would answer. She was about 95 years old, and she had a stoma in her throat. Without fail, she would go on and on screaming to me about how she didn't owe any money. Her version of screaming was hissing violently through the stoma while her chapped lips angrily mouthed the words.

These farmhouse showdowns would go on for weeks at a time, and they usually culminated in me threatening to withhold her paper, and then her meeting me at the end of the dirt driveway and shoving a few quarters in my hand a few days later.

It was a shitty job, but at the time I was so addicted to candy and soda that I was willing to do anything for a little cash.