Paper Route

Have I told you that I grew up in a Baptist Church?

Maybe you didn't fully understand what that meant, though. We were at that church every Sunday from sun-up until after lunch time. We returned for Evening Services by 4 or 5 in the afternoon. On Tuesday nights we returned for something called "visitation" (so interesting a sociological phenomenon that I'll save it for another blog). On Wednesday night, we went to Awana, a curious amalgam of the Boy Scout / Military meets memorizing relevant fragments of scripture. Thursday night was family night. At church. (Seriously.) I don't remember details, but I remember that it had to do with committee meetings and a potluck dinner and freetime for kids. Friday or Saturday was a youth activity, and Sunday we would rinse, repeat & begin the re-cycle...

Oops I forgot to mention that we also went to *school* at the church. Secular humanism threatened the integrity of public schools, what with Madelyn Murray O'Hair and the Scopes Monkey Trial and all.

And the cumulative outcome of all this church? I had no idea what kind of world lived outside of the trips back and forth to church. There were plenty of people in this small world. My dad was the best preacher in town and the crowds packed in around him. So it wasn't like I felt like I didn't know enough people -- I was just pretty darn curious about everybody else. I poured over the newspaper. I watched my two hours of tv per week with so much vigor that i couldn't hear anything else. I snuck books like Star Wars and Goonies and Gremlins from friends since we didn't believe in going to the movies.

It is the responsibility of writers to listen to gossip and pass it on. It is the way all storytellers learn about life. (Grace Paley)

So when I finally became a paperboy at the age of twelve, I began my habitual and ongoing addiction to voyeurism. I had memorized the first and last names of all of the neighbors for two streets over throughout my collection cycles. I pieced together bits and parts of who they were. What scandals might lurk behind their doors. Alcohol? Cigarettes? Divorce? What made them a part of the World which I was so vigorously fleeing.

I eventually became convinced that the DeLongs at the end of the street were either intentionally avoiding my collection visits or they were living lives of crime. What else could account for their tightly closed door? Their perpetual "absence"? Crime.

If I stood in the entyway of a home as I waited for them to write the check, i would memorize everything. How many children in the pictures on the wall? Any of them have grandchildren yet? Did they collect figurines? Still have leftover hanging macrame? Then I would rehearse all of the details from each house like a creed as I loped up their sidewalks onto their porches, folding and stuffing the Muskegon Chronicle into their boxes.

I think ultimately I wanted to know:

were they like us? or were we truly as different as we purported to be?

Sometimes now when I am at a party or in a crowd or in any other minglable space, I feel myself diffusing. My curiousity braided with empathy turns me into the broadest of chameleons. In those moments I feel the euphoria of disappearing completely. I become the crowd. I don't exist except in the common will and the collective intention. I float as the us above the heads of every one individual. I want to deliver the newspaper into every single hand in the room and as they write their check for this month, stare into their eyes or their world until I can crack the code and Be Them.