My relationship with Newspapers

I occasionally grab a copy of the Michigan Daily (UM's daily newspaper) when I'm walking through the lobby of my dorm.  I'll leaf through it, read a couple articles, then throw it on a shelf where they accumulate until my roommate decides to make paper mache and needs newspaper.  Today I grabbed a copy as I headed into the dining hall, and sat and read it as I ate lunch.  There was an article about the city tearing down some houses in a neighborhood I really like, and a short piece on Bollywood cinema.  There was an opinion article on the racism and sexism of Halloween, and one about woman and population growth and the 7 billion mark we've recently passed.  And I sat in the dining hall, absently eating my soup and sandwich, reading these articles, and I started thinking about newspapers and my life.

My oldest brother was a paper boy for many years, rushing home from school every weekday to bag up the papers and jump on his bike.  He would rise early on Saturdays and Sundays to go about his route, and in the winter, everything was miserable and the ice and snow caused bicycle crashes.  So we always had newspapers around, and I would sometimes help bag all of the papers, counting them to make sure we had the correct amount.  In their plastic bags to protect from rain, they would slide against each other in the large canvas bag, especially as you got down to the last ten houses or so.  If you used one canvas bag you had to balance on your bike carefully, and if you used two, you had to take papers out evenly.  The shoulder straps would dig into your shoulders, and if it was early on a Saturday morning in the winter, you just plain miserable.  So that was newspaper delivery

But I got into the habit of reading the paper from when I was ten or so.  At first it was just the comics, and maybe an interesting article or two.  But eventually I would read most of the paper, excluding the sports section.  Sometimes not all at the same time; I would go through and read everything that interested me first, and then when I was sitting on the couch, bored later, I would pick it up and read the articles that weren't so interesting.  The paper was always on the couch, and so occasionally I would read it as I talked on the phone with others (especially Gwen.  There would be times when I read the paper and she watched TV and we wouldn't say anything for several moments, before remembering we were on the phone with each other.)

Sundays before church I would rifle through the paper, scattering the ads all over the living room floor in the process, searching for the comics and the Parade section.  I would read the comics as I got ready for church, and then after church in the golden silence of Sunday afternoon naps, I would open the Parade and read celebrity interviews, cooking recipes, a few comics, ask Marilyn, and inevitably, an inspirational piece.  For some reason, I almost always found myself wanting to cry as I read those pieces.  And occasionally, other times when I was reading other parts of the paper, I would almost start to tear up.  It must be a strange thing about print media.

And so today I found myself, at 12:10 in the dining hall of my dorm, reading the paper and wanting to cry.