I’m excited to report that SJ the WordBurglar has released a video for one of my favourite songs: The Route! It’s pretty fun; I’m loving the strawberry milk and how he keeps waking up in the printing plant.
I had a paper route when I was thirteen. It definitely felt a lot like that some mornings. I didn’t last one year at that job. Summer and fall were OK, but I couldn’t handle waking at 6am in the pitch black dead of February, to wade through snow up to my waist, the frigid air gnawing my face through my scarf. And I hated going door to door to collect money from my customers.
Most papers have stopped using paper boys and girls, in favour of adults in vans and direct debit. What do kids do for cash these days in those long years before they’re old enough to flip burgers, man the mall, or lead camp groups? There’s still babysitting I guess (in neighborhoods where the parents haven’t turned paranoid), and then what? Monetizing your blog? It doesn’t have quite the same gloriously tortured ring as The Route’s chorus: “I was risking my life to bring you the news,” does it?
The Route is featured on Nadine’s MixTape, which you can still pick up with Break On Through at either location of Babar Books, or from me in person at a reading this fall.
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