Generally speaking, newspaper delivery is a fairly easy job - time-consuming, yes; potentially tedious, in a locale less breathtaking than mine, but easy enough for junior high students to do it. My specific routes are trickier, since they include the majority of downtown Small City, OR, and thus a great many stairs, apartment buildings, bars, etc and so on. It's illegal for anyone under 21 to do this route, which I guess nobody I deliver to is really aware of, since the general consensus on my age seems to be "he's about eighteen."
However, having had since April to learn it, I can very nearly do the route in my sleep. Sure, sometimes people will add or drop, but that's par for the course and you just have to keep an eye on your delivery list. I can say without bragging that I'm a damn good newsboy.
Annnnnnnnd then there's Jack Long*. Jack Long's entry on my delivery list said he lived in Mint Chocolate Chip Apartments (the insides are mint green, with dark wood accents,) though it did say that MCCA could be found on block 15 when I know it's on block 14. Still, small change. Typos happen. MCCA has a reputation for weirdness, anyway - there's one customer whose door I'd slid the paper under every day since the office actually saw fit to notify me that she'd renewed her prescription, who insisted that someone stole it out from under her door. I'm pretty sure one of the residents is a wizard. That is all beside the point.
The point is that I kept giving Jack Long his newspaper. His apartment number had been subscribed way back in the day when I agreed to train for this route, but dropped before I actually started it, so I thought he'd just renewed. I gave him his newspaper. For about a week and a half, I gave him his newspaper. Then, one fine afternoon, with my best friend in tow, I found myself square in the path of a large, disgruntled, mustachioed older gentleman bearing down on me with a newspaper for which he demanded explanation.
I don't have a subscription!, he told me. Why are you giving me this!?
So I apologised and told him I'd inquire at the office. The office, in turn, told me that they'd made a typo. I was to deliver to 404, not 401.
I delivered to 401.
Jack Long called the office to say he hadn't received his paper.
O-kayyyyy...margin of error, we figured. His roommates had swiped it or something. I re-delivered the next day.
Jack Long once more contacted the office to inquire where his paper was.
The next day, I knocked on the door as I slid the paper under and called out "Here's your paper, Mr. Long!" before continuing my deliveries on that floor. Lo and behold, as Best Friend and I headed back to the elevator, an elderly lady marched out the door and right up to me and, thrusting the rolled-up newspaper at my face, told me "I cannot accept this in any way! Please give it to someone with more use of it."
Stunned by the bizzarely ritual nature of this rejection, I took the newspaper, finished delivering to the apartment building, and wandered downstairs and outside to stare blankly into traffic for a moment while the cogwheels of my brain spun helplessly. Clarity dawned suddenly.
I would call Jack Long.
I called Jack Long. Jack Long picked up. I told him my name and that I was the newsboy and what had happened with the elderly lady; Jack Long was quite polite but made no comment about her. Whatsoever. Didn't acknowledge I'd even mentioned her.
"She's a figment of our imagination," said Best Friend.
"She's a ghost living in his apartment," I countered. "Neither of them knows the other's there."
At any rate, Jack Long and I had agreed that I'd redeliver the newspaper right then. Just slide it under his door, leave it, that's all she wrote. I did this.
Jack Long called the office to say he received no newspaper that day.
My boss told me to put it in a bag, the next day, and tie it to his door. This went about as expected, in that lo and behold, Jack Long STILL DIDN'T GET HIS FRIGGEN' NEWSPAPER. The newspaper office, at last, got involved; they knew I'd been delivering the newspapers, and they said Jack Long had been quite polite over the phone, which accorded with my experience of him.
Thus, they sent someone down MCCA, bearing a newspaper, to knock on his door. This unlucky emissary waited about ten minutes with no response before calling the office, which in turn called Jack Long, telling him there was someone standing outside the door with a newspaper, who would knock and give it to him. He agreed to this, the person knocked, and...
...nothing. The person had heard the phone ring, they'd heard a man's voice answer, and nothing had happened. By this point, Best Friend and I had built up a whole menagerie of increasingly bizarre theories and my poor boss had degenerated into laughing helplessly on the phone and describing the situation as "redonkulous." She and I also agreed that the next day I would knock, then stand there and wait for JAck Long.
Being a good little paperboy, I did this. From inside the apartment issued a few creaks and thumps and then, horror of horrors, the frightening older lady's voice saying she'd been there in a moment. Oh, crap, I thought. John Long isn't home. I will have to actually confront someone over the fact that, yes, the newspaper does belong here. Yes, you can accept it in some form, namely "kept for your flatmate."
She took her time, though, so the arrival of Craig the Awesome Maintenance Man preceded hers.
"Hey, Craig!" I called. "Jack Long lives here, right?"
"Huh? We don't have a Jack Long. Only one Jack lives here, and he's on the sixth story."
...oh.
I apologised to the elderly lady and, mind buzzing, finished delivering to MCCA, which gets a lot of papers. As soon as I got outside, I called up my boss and informed her, trying not to laugh out of sheer bewilderment, "Jack Long does not exist."
"What?"
"Jack Long. Doesn't exist. Or at least he doesn't exist in MCCA."
Silence from the other end of the line; then, with dawning comprehension, "Ohhhhhhhh!"
Lo and behold, there had been a typo all along! The fifteenth block number was right. The street name...not so much. Jack Long, it turns out, lives in Retiree Apartment Complex, one block southeast of MCCA, and, fortunately, is a very nice man, whom I am fairly certain was supposed to be a hobbit, and who is more amused than anything else at the lengthy chain of communication gaps that delayed his papers for over a week.
Sometimes, even the most tedious job can be exciting, funny, or just plain surreal. And, sometimes, the most trivial and unexpected of outcomes can do great things for one's faith in humanity.
*Bloop bloop bloop.
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