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I was the best goddamned paperboy on earth. This photo ran in the Glendale News-Press after I won a subscription sales contest. I was 11. My dad is the tall dorky guy on the far left. The prize in the contest was tickets to the 1978 All-Star baseball game in San Diego. The kid on the far right didn't sell nearly as many subscriptions as me; his name was drawn at random from a list of all the paperboys who entered the sales context. If you think that sounds vaguely unfair and potentially demotivational in a Dilbertesque way, you're right. I went on to win many other fine prizes as a star paperboy including a trip to Hawaii. I retired at the ripe old age of 12, only to return to the newspaper biz eleven years later as a reporter. |