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August 16, 2005
Envelopes of Money
In the days before my old co-worker invented the internet people used to read newspapers to get their news. And I had a paper route.
When I was about seven years old I told my mom I wanted some money. She flatly refused to give me any. She told me to go out and get a job if I wanted and money.
"What do you mean get a job I'm seven years old. No place hires seven year olds."
"Well, you can get a paper route," she told me.
We were both wrong. I was because I could have moved to Southeast Asia where child labor is more acceptable. She was because it was illegal for me to have even a paper route.
The manager told us it was illegal when my brother and I went down to the newspaper office with my mom. He also told us that he used to live on the other side of the block from us when he was in college.
"Is that one family still there? The Hasleys or something."
"Yeah, they still live there."
"I was their neighbor on the other side. Oh, we had fun times back then."
"You know the Hasleys?"
"No. I don't know them. My roommates and I would sit out on our deck and watch them fight. It was better than TV."
"Well they are entertaining." My mother said.
"Yeah, some days I'd have to hurry back from a night class to get back in time to see the old man come home. He was always drunk and she'd beat him out in the front yard."
"That sounds like our neighbors."
"I loved when he started painting. He'd do it for about five minutes before quitting and going inside for a beer. They'd have all sorts of splashes of different colors all over the house." He giggled.
Warmed by the memories of his college days he allowed my brother and I to get a paper route as long as it was in my mom's name and that if we ever needed to do anything with customers we'd go together. Because our ages added together exceeded the legal requirement by well over a year.
We rarely had to do anything with the customers until one day after he decided circulation was too low. To increase circulation he called up all the paper boys and asked us to canvas for the newspaper. He'd pick us up and drive us to a different area of town every night and we'd knock on doors and ask them to subscribe to the newspaper. My brother and I did it because the pay from the paper route was low, even for a seven and eight year old, and he was promising a cash bonus for every new subscription we got.
Even though we had no idea what we were doing we went around town and knocked on strangers doors. These we some of the first doors we had ever knocked on and it was certainly the first time we had ever asked anyone to buy anything besides our normal childish lies.
Not having much experience showing up unannounced at stranger's doors we didn't know to expect them not to be around. We expected strangers stayed home all day like our parents and we got upset sometimes if too many people didn't answer the door. "Why isn't anyone answering the door?"
"Maybe they can't hear. Knock harder. Knock on the inside door."
So my brother opened the outer door on one of the houses and banged on the inner door. Mailed spilled out from between the doors. We tryied to put the mail back, but couldn't.
We were too tempted by the change rattling around in one of the envelopes. "That one's full of money."
"Let's take it."
"No, they'll catch us."
"No they won't." He snatched up the oversized envelope. "Let's go."
We ran from the porch, down the stairs and started off across the street. "What a you guys got there?"
"Nothing." I said.
"This envelope is full of money," my brother told to one of the older paper boys.
"Really? Let me see." He grabbed the envelope and called over to his friends. "Guys come here."
"Check this out, the brats found an envelope full of money," one guy told to a couple of his friends.
"No way. Fucking open it."
The guy ripped the envelope open and found it full of dozens of smaller envelopes bulging with cash, checks and change. Within seconds the older guys swarmed around the envelopes tear them open. It was a frenzy of feathered mullets parachute pants and dirty ones. I backed away, but my brother forced himself in. "Give it back. That's our money. We found it."
They shut him up with little effort, but he emerged from the brawl with a handfull of envelopes. "Let's go." He said to me.
We decided it was best to open hide before opening the envelopes so we crawled behind some bushes between two houses. "
"I think we should give it back."
"We can't give it back."
"Yes we can. We stole it. We have to give it back."
"No. We can't we already opened the big envelope and the big guys have most of the stuff. If we bring it back they'll get our fingerprints."
This made my heart race more. They could get our fingerprints. This was a scary thought to me. "They might catch us trying to give it back too. Then they'd think that we stole all the rest."
"Yeah. We should open it."
We split the stack of envelopes in half and started to open them with our cold, nervous, shaky hands and nervously fluttering chests. We got about $37 between the two of us if we counted the checks in a couple of the envelopes. We sat together trying to figure out what to do with the checks. Could we cash them if they weren't made out to us? We didn't think so.
We had just decided that we should rip the checks into pieces so nobody would find them when someone in one of the houses saw us huddled in the bushes outside their house and yelled, "What the hell are you kids doing there?"
We froze convinced they knew about the envelopes of money. "Get the fuck out of there!" the man in the house yelled at us.
We picked up and ran a full block before stopping. We wanted to get away from there, but didn't want to go too far. After all, if we did our manager would know we skipped a couple houses and he would be mad.
Apparently law-breaking was ok, but getting the manager mad was a real no-no.
Posted by calculatoronfire at August 16, 2005 04:46 PM
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