CH 8 — MY DAD WAS A PAPERBOY

So, my dad had a paper route. “Yeah, so? Lots of guys have paper routes growing up.” Well . . . My dad had a paper route when I was in middle school. Oof.

I got my first job delivering papers when I was 11 or 12 years old. Hard to believe it was legal. I wasn’t even an employee. The newspaper basically sold me papers. I had to fold them, deliver them, answer customer questions and complaints, win new business, bill, collect, all of it. At the end of the month, I had to pay the paper and got to keep what was left. Sometimes it wasn’t much. It was an awful job. I was in 5th grade. A kid. My boss and my customers were mean. The whole thing stunk, but I didn’t have a lot of options for making money. No rational person would willingly do this job if they had other options.

While I was delivering papers my dad was working as a research analyst or something for the state legislature. I didn’t know what that meant, but he had a nice office in a fancy building and wore a suit to work. Seemed like a pretty sweet gig. I didn’t know how much he made, but once overheard a conversation that suggested it was thousands of dollars a month, which sounded like an obscene amount of money. I wondered why we didn’t have nicer stuff seeing as how we were so rich and all.

I took some other jobs but kept the paper route all the way into high school. My schedule got busier and busier, and my paperboy performance got worse and worse. Some months I made zero dollars because I couldn’t get my collections done. I started paying my sister to collect. The whole thing sucked. Eventually, I started getting better after-school jobs and was about ready to stop waking up at 4a to do a job I absolutely hated when something strange happened.

At some point in my paper delivery career, my dad called my boss and asked him for a job . . . as a paperboy.

How did that happen? Well, it turns out my dad had gotten sideways with some other dude in a suit in that fancy office and found himself on the wrong side of some political “maneuvering.” I have no idea what happened, but I know my dad is an awesome guy who is friendly and kind. It’s hard to believe he was the bad guy here. It’s not super surprising that he got blindsided by politics, I guess. Regardless, the outcome was he was now a 43-year-old man with three kids, a mortgage, and no job. Not a great situation.

He did the same thing most of us would do. He freaked out. Lucky for us, dad’s freakout wasn’t alcoholism or gambling. No, it was classic dad. His freakout was getting us off to school, sitting on the couch and saying “Crap. What am I going to do?” Take care of others and then have a quiet moment of sheer panic so as not to be a burden on anyone else. It’s fun to hear him tell this story now. He is sitting there at the absolute low point. He feels like a failure. Everything is hopeless. At that moment my mom walks in and says, “You know, you’ve always loved kids and coaching. You are a great teacher. Why don’t you get a job as a teacher?”

When you look at this objectively, this is absolutely terrible advice. Dad is in his mid-forties. He has a lot of financial obligations. At this point in time, it takes multiple years of schooling and unpaid student teaching to become certified to teach (even though he already had two college degrees). Once he does get a job as a teacher he will make less, not more money. I mean, let’s be honest. It’s a bad career move. Just awful advice.

Only my dad says it sounded like it was spoken to him directly from heaven. Those three sentences woke something up inside of him. It pulled him out of the pit and gave him a purpose.

So, at 43 my dad started over to pursue a low-paying, high-stress job tending to middle school brats.

It was such a dumb decision, but it was 100% the right decision. I love the story. Here’s what the next two years looked like.

My dad enrolls in the local university and starts taking education classes. These classes cost money. My mom is working and making a bit, but it doesn’t cover the nut. So, my dad sees my crappy job as a paperboy and says “Well, if I get a route 10x bigger and wake up two hours earlier I can make enough to keep us going while still attending classes and being a good dad.” That is exactly what that crazy man did.

He started getting up at 3a to deliver 500 papers. He would get home at 6:30a in time to wake us up, feed us breakfast, and get us off to school. Then he would go to school. Then he would coach our games, attend our games, make dinner, study, help us study, etc . . . He’d try to get in bed by 10p so he could get five hours before doing it all over again. No days off. Seven days a week. It was brutal.

Money was very very tight. We all felt it. I didn’t have any of the cool clothes or gadgets my friends did. I tried out for the 7th-grade basketball team in $15 shoes from Payless. I can still see them in my mind — XJ9000’s. My friends laughed at me. I got cut. I blamed the shoes. I blamed my dad. I hated that period. I hated getting up and seeing my dad delivering papers. It was embarrassing.

I didn’t know that I was learning one of the most important lessons my dad would ever teach me.

My dad never stopped working and being an awesome dad. His professional life had completely fallen apart. His income went to zero at the exact moment his expenses went to maximum. It would rock any man. Maybe it rocked my dad, but we never saw it. We just watched him work and took for granted that he was always there at every game, every school event. He was always tired, but he just kept going. He did whatever it took to keep the family going. He gave everything.

That turned out to be useful when I was 42 and flying high in my high-paying dream job. I had five kids, a huge mortgage, and a whole lot of pride. Then I got fired. The circumstances were eerily similar. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to go into the pit. I knew what to do. My dad had prepared me for this exact moment. I knew I just had to do whatever it took. I am still digging my way out of that job loss, but my family has thrived. I have been there. I have done what I have had to do. I sold roofs. I consulted. I just copied my dad. I do not love that my dad had to work so hard, but I am thankful he lost his job and became a paperboy.

I look back on those snowy mornings when we all had to get up to help him bag the papers and get them delivered with fondness. We were together as a family doing whatever it took. We were happy because dad willed it. He sacrificed his health, his comfort, his pride to make sure we had enough, to make sure he was always present, to make sure we were a family. I am so grateful.

My dad’s stupid career decision ended up blessing the entire community.

I was not the only one grateful my dad gave up the suit for khakis and lunch duty. It turns out that my dad is a pretty dang good teacher. It turns out that my mom’s awful advice was prophetic. My dad was knitted together in his mother’s womb to teach, guide, and nurture young men and women. He absolutely loved it.

He spent the next 30 years wearing stupid costumes to teach his students about the Egyptians, coaching every middle school sport in existence, and finding creative ways to help struggling students believe in themselves. I have not tried to count the number of lives he has impacted, but it’s hard to go back to my hometown and find someone who passed through the halls of Eagle Valley Middle School during those 30 years and doesn’t have some positive memory of my dad making them smile or coaching their team.

Do you know what’s really crazy? After dad got his teaching certificate and landed a job, he kept the paper route. He kept it for years. He needed to supplement his teaching salary to provide for his family. He showed us how to work, how to persevere, how to do whatever it took. Sheesh, I am so proud of that grown-ass man with a paper route. Thanks dad.