A Truly Kinder and Gentler World (Cas)

 My six year old son wants a paper route. The kind my husband and I had when we were kids; getting up early every morning, picking up a delivery of local daily newspapers and rolling them all up individually with rubber bands, hopping on our bikes with our delivery tote bag and tossing newspapers up onto subscribers front porches.  There is no need to explain to you just how many of those details are total fantasy now a days. There are not a lot of real papers left to speak of, children go virtually nowhere unsupervised anymore and I am pretty sure OSHA would crack down on kids handling their bikes one-handed while they flung the papers with their other hand or some other thoroughly ridiculous detail of the operation. The world sure was safer and happier when we were kids, right?
        Not to be deterred by any of these insignificant details, my son set about writing his own paper and rolling it up into rings cut from repurposed toilet paper rolls and compiling them into a grocery tote bag so I could walk with him while he rides around the neighborhood delivering to people we know. Sure, why not? It will be a good writing exercise if nothing else. He can “pretend” to get some “real world” skills, I can support that experience. He decides on an afternoon delivery time of which I fully approve and he dives into his work. Paper (from the already used on one side box) and markers in hand he draws boxes around different stories, some have drawings or illustrations meant to represent photos of the news, some have wiggly lines that might represent the content other than the headlines, but most entries are just the headlines. He occasionally asks me to properly spell words for him, but for the most part is working hard and very independently for a long time.

        After several sessions of this style of working, my son sits down at the table where I am working and he has a notepad and a pencil.
“Are you going to interview me for your paper?” I ask.
“No,” he says, “Maybe later. Right now, I was hoping you could tell me some stories from the real news.”
“What do mean “real”?” I ask.
“Well, like the thing Saturday to stop Monsanto from making poisonous food, tell me about that again, for my paper.”
“Okay, GMO Free Project of Tucson is Hosting a March Against Monsanto at 10 am Saturday in Reid Park.”
“GMO’s are terrible poison and so people who don’t want to have to eat them will go to Reid Park on Saturday and rally with what? Like signs or something?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Do you know other news? Do you know what happened in Oklahoma?”
“I do. There was a huge tornado in Oklahoma and a lot of people lost their homes, got really hurt and a lot of people died.”
“So now they need what like, love and some new homes and stuff?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Okay.”

        Back to work he went. Incorporating his new “real news” items into his newspaper. All the while, I am still smugly thinking about the much more charmed and freedom filled life I had as a child and how it is so “nice” that my son gets to “practice” his real world skills in the safety of our own home. Then I got my copy of the paper. Sure enough, a story about the event at Reid Park, “NO GMO’S RALLY AT REID PARK” with a drawing of protestors holding signs, one sign says, “Real Food, thank you” with a smiley face. Another one about the tornado with a drawing of a tornado an upside down car and an upside down house, the headline “A Tornatoe was in Oklahoma, please send them your love, your money and some hope.” There were ads; “Listen to Alice Cooper on the Muppets or the radio” and “Buy Books at Bookman’s or Antigone (drawing of books)”. There were some factoids; “The Cheetah runs 75 miles per hour” and “Second graders at Montessori Schoolhouse are studying Mexico (drawing of a mariachi band)”.  There was lots of inspirational ideas and anecdotes; “Plant trees (drawing of trees)”, “Be KIND (drawing of hearts)”, “Learn at School, I did!”, “Adopt Today, Cuddly (drawing of a puppy)”, “Ride a Bike”, “Give Poor People Money, here or in Africa to buy food”, “Summer is coming (drawing of him in a pool)” and “Surprise your kids with popcorn and a DVD like Star Wars”. There was a trivia section querying whether chickens eat cows (they don’t) or if cats are vegetarians (they aren’t). Finally, there was a section on the bottom that said, “Please pay 300 pennies for this paper if you like or do 300 nice things or give even more money to someone who is doing nice things like the Center for Biological Diversity or the Food Bank thank you oh and be happy.”

        He handed me my copy and informed me that mine was free because I am helping him and because I already do lots of nice things. I read his paper and I started thinking about my paper route when I was a kid. I hated it really. Most days it was okay, if the weather wasn’t terrible, but it was Iowa so the weather was usually terrible. I never got to sleep in because even on weekends people wanted their papers before 6. I always got it right onto their porches and people would still complain it wasn’t good enough and short me when it was time to collect payment. People wouldn’t pay; seriously, they wouldn’t answer the door for an 8 year-old paper girl to give her the $3.50 they owed for 6 am porch delivery of the daily paper!! A lot of the people were just plain mean and most days I daydreamed about my nice warm bed and wished I was still in it. Worst of all, I always knew the news!! I started my day with it. Granted, the Sioux City Journal’s headlines in the 70’s were nowhere as bad as what is plastered all over news stations and the internet today, but bad news still got the front page and there was plenty of it. Maybe we weren’t reveling in our freedom and happiness back then, it just sounds more appealing when you retell it.

        Personally, I would much rather read a paper like my son’s everyday. His world really is a kinder and gentler world. He focuses on solutions and cooperation and really believes in kindness and beauty, that’s the kind of freedom I want!