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Lessons in life

Life had gotten tough, for this a professional living in Topeka Kansas, working one and a half hours away in Overland Park. The daily commute totals three hours and the gas expenditure per month is outrageous. Adding the factors together, it was becoming difficult making ends meet. I had been desperately trying to support three children while being forced to pay outrageous medical bills and the stress it caused was menacing.

I finally had to make the difficult decision to take a second job. It is extremely difficult to find work as a systems analyst when you already work in the field during the required hours for such a position. The natural course in this situation was to take a part time job in some service related industry and I decided the best fit for me was to deliver papers. Who would have considered the growth opportunities available to an individual in what some would consider a menial job such as paper carrier? The story you are about to read will explain what I mean when I speak these words, and I hope to be able to share more like it in the future.

I arose two thirty am on a Sunday morning; it was a kind day for paper carriers. I rolled out of bed, brushed my hair and teeth, threw on a pair of jeans, my tennis shoes and a t-shirt, and arrived at the factory only to find that the papers were two hours late, and view the enormous line of carrier cars that had formed had not yet begun to move. Each carrier is assigned a position in line, only on Mondays and Tuesdays could the order in line be random, and I was assigned a position second or third from the last. This type of delay would generally aggravate me, but today was Sunday, I had no where to go and I took the opportunity to rest my eyes occasionally opening them to a sound of a carrier starting their car engine or a group carriers conversing with each other.

My route is one of the smaller routes, not the smallest but one of them, however, my route takes more time to deliver because unlike the other routes where the carriers can just drive and throw, half my customers require that I "porch" their papers, which causes me to have to get out of the car and ensure the paper lands at their doorstep. I also have to deliver to the two hospitals in town, and again have to exit my car and proceed through the corridors to the different units and offices that have a subscription.

This particular morning, after I had completed the delivery of all my residential customers, the medical


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