Because Mom didn’t do the allowance thing, I took a job delivering the Philadelphia Inquirer. It seemed simple enough. “It’s easy.” The newspaper guy said when he came to the house. “You pick up the papers at the stop down the street, deliver them and once a week, collect the money from the people on your route.” He was right. It was easy. All of it, except for the money. The people that paid and tipped me every time, was not the problem. It was the ones who didn’t. I would try going to their homes at different times—early in the morning, dinner time, weekends—and still, the same customers would dodge me, pretending they weren’t home when I could clearly see them moving behind their curtains. Others answered the door, only to tell me to “come back later,” while turning their pockets inside out to show me. “My wife will be home later tonight. She holds all the money.” After I paid for the newspapers, I had nothing left over. I was an eleven-year-old failed entrepreneur.
“You should collect during the Superbowl.” My father said, when I told him about my paper route dodgers. “It’s on Sunday. Most people stay home to watch the game, and if they are having a party, it’s better because, they will be too embarrassed to not pay you. So, on Sunday night, I headed out to my paper route customer. My Dad was right. Most people were home, Doors that were usually. closed, opened to bright living rooms filled with people drinking beer, while the half time show lit up television sets. Dancers and singers took fans onto the field making the biggest Congo line I had ever seen. I stood in doorways while women wearing bright blue eye shadow and blonde feathered back hair, commented on how cute I was. At another house, the man pointed towards the kitchen, and told me to go tell his wife. While she went to get her money, a commercial came on that quieted the room. “That’s Mean Joe Green.” A man slurred. The image on the screen was of the famous football player limping through a stadium tunnel—his dirty team jersey draped over his shoulder. While reporters swarmed behind him, a little boy in a blue sweatshirt and jeans appears, holding a full bottle of Coca Cola. “Mr. Green. Mr. Green.” He calls. The football player begrudgingly turns, “Yeah?”
“You need any……help?”
“Mm mm.” signaling a sad no to the boy.
“I just want you to know I think…. I think…You’re the best ever.” The boys’ eyes widen in awe of Mr. Green.
Limping away, Mean Joe Green, hangs his head more. “Yeah sure.”
“You want my coke?” The little boy holds out the bottle of coke in his hand. “It’s OK. You can have it. Really, you can have it.”
Mean Joe smiles, reaches, for the coke, and while he drinks it down, a coke and a smile jingle play. The sad boy walks away. “See you around.” I felt so sorry for the little boy. I wanted Mean Joe to say something, but then he did. “Hey kid—catch.” He tosses the boy his jersey. “Wow! Thanks, mean Joe.” The song finishes have a coke and a …. smile.
We all just stood there for a moment until the lady handed me my money. “Are we all caught up then? “She asked. I assured her that she had paid her newspaper debt, and I headed home.
The same commercial played through that next year, and it invoked a feeling in me every time. What made it effective for me was that the boy’s plain blue sweatshirt told the story that he wasn’t just a regular fanatical kid wearing his favorite player’s jersey. The blue sweatshirt made me believe the kid genuinely cared for Mean Joe Green, the man, and the player. That mixed with the vulnerability of a football player who had just been defeated, created a purity that I felt deep inside. The commercial, in thirty seconds told a beautiful, emotional story with a happy conclusion.
I counted my money that night, and for the first time, I made a profit. “I told you.” My dad said. “The Superbowl is a moneymaker for a lot of people.” The image my customers saw, a young girl out on a chilly night, collecting for her newspaper route, during the Super Bowl worked. Without knowing it, like Coca Cola, I had sold an image of a story that sold.
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