Lost Journal

Humor Column
by Tim Mollen
October 27, 2005

Every Paperboy Needs an Enforcer

Journal Entry:  March 6, 1984 (age 14)

My brother Dan and I are not the best paperboys.  In fact, we kinda stink at it.  But Dan makes up for poor service with a sunny, charming personality.  I, um...don’t.

Dan’s customers gladly receive their Sunday paper on Tuesday, as long as it is delivered by that really nice boy with the bad haircut and the complete lack of melanin.  Dan is so nice, in fact, that he has difficulty bringing himself to conduct the ugly business of collecting weekly payments from his customers.  Some of his elderly customers with hearing problems don’t hear his timid knocks on their doors, and thus have accumulated substantial debts.

These unpaid balances have been cutting into Dan’s funding for Tony’s frozen pizzas at Great American, so he needed to do something.  Last night, after a particularly inspiring episode of Hill Street Blues, he decided that he needed a “bad cop” to accompany him on his weekly bill collection rounds.  He knew just the right “heavy” (who actually only weighs 100 pounds).

I agreed to accompany Dan on his collection rounds.  But at a price.  After substantial discussions with our older brother and labor consultant Bob, I came up with a compensation plan that amounts to gross extortion.  For the hour spent walking from house to house with Dan, I would be rewarded with so much soda, candy and sugared cereal that he would actually spend all the money we had just collected.  But Dan didn’t mind.  He just wanted the company.

So today, the two of us weaved our way up and down West End Avenue, Briar Court and Riverside Drive, demanding money from confused and angry customers.  Dan eschewed the normal good cop/bad cop model of confronting people together.  In his safer, less stressful model, the good cop waits in the bushes while the bad cop rings the doorbell.  We look enough alike that most customers thought I was Dan when they came to their door.

But this was a different Dan than the one they had seen whistling and smiling as he sauntered through their yard each day.  This Dan seemed…upset.  “The bill most certainly is $68.  No, you haven’t seen me collecting in 20 weeks.  Maybe that’s because you play Family Feud on the TV so loud that you can’t hear your own doorbell!”

An hour later, awash in a haze of Dr. Pepper, Whatchamacallit bars, and Sugar Corn Pops, I accepted Dan’s heartfelt thanks.  It’s good to be comfortable in my role as a pubescent crank.  But maybe I should get Dan to deliver my Press Christmas calendars next year.  Maybe I can get some decent tips for a change.

© 2005 Tim Mollen

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