The Morning Paper

I’m outside in my bare feet. It’s really too cold for that but I’m out here anyway. The sun has just come up and my coffee cup poised at my lips has me looking past the stand of cedars that mark our property line. The grass is still wet from last night’s rain, but there’s also a touch of warm sun on my toes and that’s what’s making the difference I guess. The difference of me standing here versus going back inside and forgetting the whole damn thing.

The paperboy is back to playing the game of Hide the Paper and I’ve decided that on this morning I’m going to accept the challenge. “Bring it on,” I said in my most Sly Stalone Rocky II tone of voice. (Or was that Rocky IV, with the Russian?) No mater, because coffee cup in hand, I am determined to bare footedly battle the elements to read the morning headlines.

Where could it have gone? I have, in the past, found its tattered remains strewn amongst the woodpile or in a far off corner under the cinderblock supports that shore up the far end of the trailer. I’ll look there first of course, the fire pit, then under the car, the kids wading pool and behind the sandbox.

When I say that he hides the paper I don’t mean to imply that he does this on purpose, or that the “he” that I often imagine is in fact even a “he” and not a “she”.  I’ve never actually met him/her. Now stop right there before you judge me too harshly, these days I’m having enough trouble getting out of bed with my alarm at full blast to make coffee, much less be part of any sort of early morning social exchange program.

Here in the cool morning, in that moment before my pajamas become covered in dust and cobwebs, my neighbor Jake comes up to me with an envelope in his hand. Jake, with his big sweaty mouth and over-bearing sense of self-importance, lives closer to the highway in the dark red singlewide that we all jokingly refer to as the brick.

“I’m having a surprise birthday party for Hannah,” he says “and the whole park is invited!”

“Great” I lie, “when is it, and what do we need to bring?”

The one great thing about having been together with Sweetie for so long is that now I know how to respond and which questions to ask so as to feign interest.


I’d only met Hannah once before at Dewy and Ham’s “After the Bash Hash” last New Year’s Day morning.  My memory is she wouldn’t eat anything cause she didn’t know what was in it, so she spent the afternoon with a hand full of carrots and a diet Pepsi.

I don’t understand adult picky eaters, so I can’t say I paid her much mind that morning. In fact as Jake is mentioning her name I’m having a hard time picturing her face.

Now I’m no great judge of people, and standing here, I may or may not have a clear idea of what she actually looks like, but I know this. She in no way strikes me as someone who would enjoy a surprise 30th birthday party held in her honor. She did look like someone who might bite the head off of a so-called boyfriend who was such an idiot as to plan a surprise party and invite the entire trailer park.

“I’ll supply the beer, just bring a dish to share. It’s all in the invite,” he says, and off he goes down the road to drop invitations into all of the other mailboxes.

As he leaves my eyes catch a tiny glimpse of news print sticking out of our mailbox. What our paper carrier was thinking this morning is beyond me, but unless I’m going to get my ass out of bed earlier to ask, I will never know.

I almost toss the invitation away right then and there. Sweetie won’t want to go and neither will I I’m thinking, but I don’t. I take it and the morning paper and go back inside to see if all my bumping about has woken anyone up.

To my surprise, Sweetie thinks that a pan of Funeral Beans is a small, small price to pay to watch what might only be described as an episode of Cops being made. Of course she’s right.  We don’t live the most exciting of lives anymore anyway, and these look like V.I.P. passes to the Freedom Fair.  Besides, who are we to turn up our noses at a free beer?