Friday, August 3, 2007

The Paper Boy



My dad used to do a very unusual thing with newspapers when I was a kid. Every morning, he'd walk over to the grocery store and buy the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, grab the sports section out of the two papers, and shove the rest of the paper, untouched, across the table. The rest of the paper might as well have been the wrapping paper for the sports section.


Later, when I got to college, I did the exact same thing. I was a notoriously messy roommate, mostly because every apartment I lived in was filled with unread newspapers strewn all over the place. On the kitchen table, in the living room, on all the floors and counters. It was strange enough (and a testament to the kind of sickly obsessive sports fan I am) that I would buy these papers every day and only read the sports section. But, in hindsight, what was even odder is that I bought the papers to begin with.


Now, I live in a city with possibly the greatest newspaper in the world and I've finally reached the stage where I'll at least glance at the front page of each section before I dive into the world of sports. Oddly, though, I literally can't think of a single friend that actually buys a newspaper on even a semi-regular basis. Everyone I know reads the news online now, making me feel kind of sentimental for still caring about the imposing heft of a morning paper.


Do I just buy the paper because I'm a sentimental person? Because I'm a crossword puzzle addict? Are there still people out there that, like me, love the ritual of getting the morning paper and knowing that there is more information at hand than you can ever reasonbly expect to get through? I can't be alone in my love for this, can I?






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