Paper Chumpion

I learned the hard way back in my pre-teen years that hazing wasn't only for athletes and frat boys.

Those pursuing the fame and fortune that come with delivering newspapers every snowy morning before getting onto the elementary school bus with black fingertips also have their share of pranks to endure.

Much like NFL rookies who get duct-taped to goal posts by the grizzled training camp vets, I was the recipient of a darling little gag courtesy of Richmond Heights nemeses Brian Ganim and Jeff DeWerth.

Not long after I started delivering The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, the dangerous duo conspired to finish their nearby routes extra early, then mosy on over to my corner of the condominium complex.

Was it to bombard me with snowballs?

No; that would come the following winter. This was springtime, and on one splendid Ohio morning, I returned home from my route to find a stack of newspapers on my doorstep. At this point, the typical schedule had me running inside for a bowl of Post Super Sugar Crisp and perhaps a strawberry-frosted Pop Tart with lots of butter, then hustling down the street to catch the bus with Drakeel Burns, Jenny Norris and that one albino kid from two streets over.

But here we had a major problem, so I picked up the delivered-turned-undelivered papers, ran down to the woods and just ditched them behind some trees.

Shortly after the school day began, someone from the principal's office came to get me out of class, saying that my mom was waiting outside. Normally a pushover, she greeted me with, "you're going to deliver those newspapers before you do anything else, young man."

A bunch of neighbors had called to complain about their missing papers. I still suspect Miss Milde from Periwinkle Lane was in some way behind Ganim's and DeWerth's sinister machination. She never tipped me, and I hated her. My mom did too.

Anyway, I later learned that those clowns followed me on my route without me knowing, picked up every paper I'd laid down a moment before and then ran them over to my house, undoing my masterful effort of delivering the morning paper to friends and neighbors.

I had a few routes in my neighborhood back then. And when Miss Milde notified me a few weeks in advance that she was moving out of state and that her service needed to be discontinued on such-n-such a date, guess what I did on such-n-such a date?

Remember that old joke -- what's black and white and read all over?

Well, how about this one: What's black and white and smells like piss? That's right; I made sure that Miss Milde's paper was the last one I delivered that morning, and I took a big old whiz all over it. Bee-yotch!