Kendall Card 2.0

While growing up my mom worked for the local newspaper, a small town weekly.  Typeset and old school printing machines in that little brick building.  I still remember visiting her there and the floor black with ink.

From the age of 10 to 13 I delivered a daily newspaper.  The newspapers would arrive on my front porch each day, bundled together with a plastic band.  My hands would be black from folding them and wrapping each with a rubber band.  I’d then load them in a carrying bag and ride my bicycle around the neighborhood accurately (most of the time) tossing them onto the front porches of my customers.

Fast forward to today.  I was working in the garage and asked my 6 year old son Koven if he’d run inside and grab some newspaper for me from the recycling bin.  While we don’t subscribe to a newspaper it’s common that the grocery store advertisements come as newspapers in the mail.

A few moments later he emerged from the house holding a single 8.5 x 11 white piece of paper.  He said, showing the paper to me, “Dad, it’s got writing on one side but the other side is blank.” He was smiling, obviously pleased with having brought me a great useful piece of “newspaper”.

“Oh buddy, that’s not newspaper” I replied.  As I headed into the house to grab some newspaper he looked at me and sincerely asked, “Dad, what is newspaper?”

Then it struck me.  Here’s a 6 year old who knows the difference between Internet Explorer and Mozilla, has his own e-mail address (which he proudly reminds me – even though I opened the account for him) and knows how to find a Line Rider post I put on the Backcountry.com Blog over a year ago but he doesn’t know what a newspaper is.

It’s a whole new world than it was 21 years ago when I delivered my last newspaper.