My first job was to mail supermarket flyers around the neighbourhood. The annoying pile of clumped paper in the mailbox burying your bills, that was me. I wore white sneakers one size bigger because my toes were still growing. Crusted blood edging on my denim with my grazed knees never healing from playing football on the asphalt.
The job was money under the table and didn’t pay much, but at least I ended up knowing every front door and side street in the area. We moved in teams of two and my plus one was my friend, Tony. I always buzzed to houses with odd numbers. Tony worked the even ones on the other side of the street. We talked to each other shouting from pavement to pavement. We’d disappear inside a building and pop out with fewer flyers in our hands and one more question in our heads.
One day, we’ve just walked by this woman screaming from a window. She’s telling us to go to hell, and all our ancestors with us. Then from the other side of the street, Tony says, “Do you ever think about it?”
Tony’s always been the spiritual kind. Even as a kid he saw the world with a twisted perspective. Looking at reality through his personal distorted lens.
I slip eight flyers in a building with only four mailboxes, and when I come out I say, “Think of what?” Tony presses three fingers on three different buzzers and…