There's a thing that I hadn't thought about in a very long time, but then George Michael passed away and there it was: I had a job when I was Alexis' age. The two things - a job and George Michael - seem completely unrelated, but isn't that how the fabric of life works? Two threads that seem to have nothing to do with one another are woven together and form something stronger and better.
I entered the working class in fourth grade, of all the crazy things. When we moved to the middle of nowhere in the absolute middle of nowhere, a lot of things didn't exist. A relatively new neighborhood had a few dozen mobile homes perched atop 1/2 acre lots, and nobody had thought to deliver cable service, for example. They also hadn't thought to start newspaper delivery. So I did. In fourth grade, I became the first ever paperboy in our neighborhood.
I should emphasize that paperBOY thing because everyone assumed I was a boy, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. It was a very different time and a very different place, so every month I would go door-to-door and collect payments from the neighbors who had requested delivery service. I knocked on their doors, told them I was there to collect, and waited patiently as they processed the fact that their paperBOY was actually a paperGIRL. And then I would do it again the very next month with the same dose of surprise.
In retrospect, it's very possible that many of our neighbors in that glorified trailer park spent a considerable amount of their time drunk or high. It's either that, or they had the worst memories.
I kept that paper route for a bunch of years. It was steady money at a time when it wasn't exactly legal to earn money in any other sort of stable way. I began babysitting in fifth grade, and then added a part-time job at a concessions place when I was fourteen, but I kept that paper route up until they changed the rules and said the paper had to be delivered every morning by 6:00 am.
Mornings are hard. Winter mornings in North Dakota are harder. It didn't take long for me to decide there wasn't enough steady money in the game to make it worth trudging through snow at 5:00 in the morning.
Regardless, in fifth grade, when I was Alexis' age, I had a steady job. I delivered newspapers to about 30 houses every day. Because I had a steady job, I had a little bit of money that was mine ALL MINE. I knew even then to hold those dollars close because my parents were terrible with money, but that's a story for another day. I was also terrible with money, albeit in a fifth grader sort of way, so I saved and saved until I could go to KMart and buy a stereo.
The stereo had a radio, two cassette players (so I could copy tapes! and record songs off the radio!), and a record player. It was the beginning of the end of records right about then, so the first albums I bought to play on that stereo were records.
George Michael. Faith. That was the first album I owned.
Ignoring the part where I was Alexis' age when I was listening to Faith on a constant loop (OMG), there it is. The threads of life are woven together in such a way that when George Michael passed away, I was thrust back to fifth grade. I flashed to the days of stopping to pet a wolf (literally) when I delivered the paper to that one trailer up at the top of the hill. I thought about how I always liked those people in the double-wide because they left their payment in their mailbox for me. I remembered the excitement of listening to an album on a stereo I had bought with my own money. I felt the weight of being in fifth grade and knowing that if I wanted more than what was there for me in that glorified trailer park, I was going to have to fight and work and fight some more.
Faith was the soundtrack to that first chapter. It's what I was listening to as I prepared to go to war against the poverty trap.
Monkey. THAT was the best song on that album.