The Paper Route

My Very Worst Job happened a long time ago. I was still a good summer or two away from mowing lawns for cash, and my Garbage Pail Kids addiction wasn’t satisfied through my measly allowance, so when a friend asked if I’d deliver papers on his afternoon route while he was away for a week I was extremely excited. We went over the paper route for a couple days before he left and when the day arrived I was ready to go.

I must have looked quite the sight: chubby little blond kid with socks pulled up to his knees and shorts that barely went halfway down his thigh, pedaling his bitchin red dirt bike with the plastic grocery bags full of papers up the street. Any mental image of that day, however, should include a very untied right tennis shoe.

A slob? Sure. But that’s not why I mention it. I mention it because shortly into the route I suddenly found that I couldn’t pedal the bike. At all. I also couldn’t move my right foot. The lace had wound tightly up in the pedaling mechanism and not only was making any forward progress impossible, it was making it impossible to get off the bike.

I promptly panicked and fell over. This had a dual effect of breaking the plastic bags the papers were in and bloodied my knees and elbows. Here’s another mental picture: this time the chubby blond kid is bleeding, way-too-short shorts dirty, crying on the ground with one foot tied to a bitchin red dirt bike with papers strewn around him. I somehow managed to get my foot out of the shoe, but couldn’t unwind it at all and the back wheel still wouldn’t turn. I ended up gathering as many papers I could and limped away, dragging the bitchin red dirt bike behind me to a house on the corner where I could call my mom to come get me. She did and we spent the rest of the week delivering out of her car. I’m pretty sure she ended up spending more on gas than I got for delivering.