Monday Morning Trek

I keep getting mail from the New York Times trying to get me to subscribe to their newspaper, again. A few years ago I did subscribe, but there were problems. I wasn’t getting the paper as my bill suggested.

A few weeks into the missing New York Times caper, my sister came to visit. I set her a mission: find out, at all costs, what was happening with my supposed delivery. She gets up super early and usually leaves the house to get her morning cup of coffee, on account I don’t have a coffee maker, so, she was the perfect person for the job. One morning, soon after I had set the challenge, my paper was waiting for me when I awoke. She did it! There it was, just sitting on the coffee table! She explains that when she went outside she found the paper propped up against the front door to the building, on the sidewalk. Just leaning on the front gate…What??? The door to the building is a gate, but it’s not impenetrable. There are lots of little spots where a paper could have been slipped through and left, at least where only people in my building would have access to it, not everyone in the world walking by…oh, there’s a free New York Times, oh, thank you very much, don’t mind if I do! The delivery person for the New York Times chooses to leave it on the sidewalk. I’m guessing this is not a person that would be subscribing to The Times. I canceled my subscription right then and there.

It’s difficult to find a place that sells the New York Times in my neighborhood, one of the cruddiest, and probably undereducated neighborhoods in the city. Is this an accident, or a metaphor for something larger at work here?! The New York Times has established itself as the newspaper for eggheads and smarty pants. The elite read The Times. If you want to establish yourself as a modern enlightened thinker, your reading material MUST include the New York Times. Having said that, the reason I get the Monday New York Times, and on occasion, the Tuesday, is for the crossword puzzle. I’m not smart enough to complete any of the others later in the week! And, I should be ashamed to admit this, but, frequently, I never look at anything else in the paper. I know what you’re thinking, then, I should just buy a book that solely has the crossword puzzles, but I tell you, I’ve been there, done that, and it’s just not the same. So, I get dressed, and do the Monday morning trek, and gladly pay the $2.20 for my paper, and the feeling that I am smart. Today is the day that I will be able to finish the crossword…walking down the street, and back to my neighborhood, with a New York Times clutched under my arm.