Stop the Presses...Really, Just Stop, I Don't Care

We’ve had the paper delivered daily for years, perhaps the last few of a dying breed of readers. In the local paper, I would go straight to the comics. Next came the sports section. Then to the sudoku and crossword puzzles.

These days are gone. My wife went to a prestigious university and received her Master’s Degree. For this, I am very proud of her. Shortly after, she made the extremely practical and mature decision to switch from the local paper to the Wall Street Journal. For this, I secretly despise her.

Admittedly, the paper we were subscribing to did a terrible job with the news. You could see which perspective almost every article was being written from. Certain world events were completely glanced over unless “local flavor” could be jammed sideways into it, leaving a bloated, bleeding mass on the page instead of the real story. For one who actually wanted to read the news in their newspaper, the decision was a no-brainer.

That doesn’t describe me. In the home I grew up in, which paper carried Calvin and Hobbes even through Bill Watterson’s battle over its page space was the winner of our loyalty. Even as I write, I routinely exclude “news” from the word newspaper. I saw it more for its entertainment value. The arguing and philandering of politicians, while entertaining to some, was not the entertainment I craved.

These mornings, I pick the paper up off the porch and I stare at it with hate. I growl at it quietly, yet audibly, before putting on my smile and dropping it on the table near my wife.

“There you go, babe,” I say, brightly. Then, in my head of course, “Here is your neeeeewwwwws-paper with all the neeeeewwwwws that could possibly be important from around the whooooole world.” Then, also in my head, I do a big, overdramatic, at the waist, throw out my back bow which is repeated as I back into the kitchen and pour my cereal.

She reads and attempts to discuss with me the stories contained within, not a comic strip or sports story within a hundred page turns of any of them. I'll give her credit, she really is trying to engage me in conversation. Meanwhile, I look up boring sorts of things on my iPhone, like the weather in various places of the world we wish we could travel to (did you know it’s ALWAYS 80-degrees and sunny in Waikoloa, Hawaii?), or which Marvel Legends Icons 12-inch first generation action figures are currently available on E-Bay (I have Captain America on my desk – best purchase I ever made). Occasionally, if the coffee has already endowed me with super energy, I read a novel or jot something in one of my many composition books.

All the while, deep down inside, I am jealous of my wife’s ability to read a NEWSpaper and enjoy it. I don’t know who she thinks she is.