As one of my favorite things to do, I approached training my latest replacement for delivery of the news, with a sense of reverence. We met the day before, to go over the route. Laying down the job description, went like this:
“Your job is to say, “good morning!”, and throw the latest news at peoples houses in the dark.” I explained that the timber of the morning salutation was imperative. It needed to be expressed as a joyful fascist statement of goodwill, not a submissive question, ending with a higher pitch.
His first attempt was horrendous. I berated his style as dysfunctional, badly timed, and lacking impact. The guy he tried to engage wasn’t even looking at him, had ear buds in, and was walking away. What a waste.
He did a lot better manipulating people going forward though. The gang of hoodlums in the alley we passed next, actually grinned a good morning back.
Later on in the morning, as daylight brought more people into our path, I discovered another fault to his methods, as he was saying “good morning”, right after me, and it was screwing up my good morning.
As the dictator of etiquette, I instructed him to only say, “morning”….so as we would pass people, I would say, “good”, and silently mouth “morning”; while he said it. That worked magnificently, although we only did it once, because my grin was a little too big; and I started to feel like a benevolent oppressor.
On a seriously silly note, I find it fascinating, that we have a direct impact on the physiology of others, and as a result; with a little expressive effort towards glee: we spread it.
Please consider this as a newspaper, being thrown onto your upper deck. I threw it hard. It cleared the lawn, had enough backspin to avoid denting your screen door, and hopefully landed with a pronounced whack, waking up your whole household….with my sense of a good morning.
Keep in mind, that newspapers don’t require reading; to make good fire-starters. Additionally, if you don’t open them before necessary, the inside is a relatively sterile material, for bandaging gushing wounds. Paper machê is fun too…
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