The Paper Route

 In all the tales you read about a no one becoming a someone, there are some similarities. They are just born lucky.  As in to win the lottery first you have to buy a ticket kind of luck.

So being born is number 1.

Then where you birth is equally important.  If you were born in a war torn nation your chance of reaping the harvest are dwindling already.  

Who procreates you can be another important variable.

Silver spoons notwithstanding a culture that promotes education and gung ho spirit or a love for reading or great outdoors are some classic tells that might aid the growth of someone unique in the future.

But all those clichés aside there is also another element of the rag to riches type stories that I found intriguing. 

Many of these so called made men and women happen to have run a paper route in their childhood.  This to a foreigner is a task that a young adult say in their early teens might undertake with a local newsprint distributor (all foreign concepts in the day when less people are reading paper anything or just plain reading - more than 140 characters) to drop off the daily newspaper at people's front door every morning.  For said route they could earn $10 a week or so.

American kids in the last century have had this privilege or option apparently since I have never ever seen anyone do this since I got here 25 years ago.  But this entrepreneurial act along with some even mowing down grass on their way to untold success is the stuff of yore; classic Americana.

What gives? Warren Buffett to Jeff Bezos seem to all have had a paper route. And grass to mow. Now they claim the spot of almighty men on earth with more wealth combined than half the planet's GDP.

Is there something to it or is it just a good yarn?

Well maybe the outdoor activity allowed their brain and muscle to flourish and gave some satisfaction of having earned something which could be deployed as capital to do more.  Rest were still playing with marbles or cards.

Today minus paper there are those that found a channel on Tik Tok or some other such platform to showcase and monetize their apparent talent at swinging a certain body part while wearing dazzling garments or skating along drinking juice.

Introduction of a contagion past two years of a kind not seen in recent years further eliminated much of the outdoorsy options. I guess we will never know if what you do in childhood somehow translates to future success but meantime keep reading. Even if it is this drivel.