When I was in 6th-grade, I had an afternoon paper route. The papers would come to me Tuesday afternoon and I would roll them, put them in a plastic sack, and deliver them to each of the 150 houses on my route.
It was a great job. At 2 cents per house, I couldn’t really complain about money. My job was stimulating.
Ok, so I hated my job, but being 12-years old, I didn’t really have many choices. The worst part was Justin.
Justin lived on my route. He was a year older than me, and hated me. Every week he would do anything in his power to make my life an absolute hell. He would curse at me, throw things at me, get his friends to follow me along my route and punch me whenever I threw a paper.
The worst was that winter.
I was delivering to Justin’s house and he comes out of the backyard and shouts “Hey.” I pretend to ignore him. I was in no mood to put up with anything he had to say. He shouted again.
“Hey, stop. I’m not going to pick on you.”
Because I was a stupid 12-year old, I stopped to see what he had to say.
“Me and my friends feel really bad about everything we’ve done and, well we’re all in the back building a snow fort and if you’d like to join that’d be cool.”
Of course I went back to join them.
We all worked on this snow fort and everything was great.
For the first two minutes.
Then, all of a sudden, Justin screams “Let’s snow wrestle!”
All three of them jump on me. One punches me in the face, another kicks the back of my knees. I fall to the ground. I get punched in the face again. Then they all start kicking me.
It was awful.
I should have known then that god didn’t want me in the media. I should have listened.