Laborious Delivery

In yet another entertaining post today, TDavid asks “Why subscribe to newspapers any more?” It’s much easier to navigate Internet news: no ink on the fingers, no paper cuts (he forgot that one), and you don’t have to hunt through all the stuff you’re not looking for. So why get it in print?

The only newspaper we still receive in print is the Bainbridge Island Review, our local paper. As you can tell by the link, they do have this paper available on-line, but the one feature they don’t appear to have (at least I couldn’t find it) is the Police Blotter. In that column they list, by date, the various calls responded to by police. To me, that’s the most entertaining part of the paper.

Police were dispatched to a potential assault at a retirement center. Both parties suffer from Alzheimer’s, and neither could remember what had happened.

Don’t you just hate yourself for laughing at that one? Another time they reported a wheel-chair pursuit at the same facility. I wonder if the same parties were involved.

Then there are the numerous reports of stolen property that the complainant later finds right where they left it. Or property stolen from unlocked cars or homes. These people should get some sort of honorary degree in stupidity.

These laughable cases are occasionally punctuated with truly sobering stories, like the one about someone reportedly trying to lure a child into their car. For the most part, though, this section serves to remind us how much Bainbridge Island is not Seattle.

I could be quite happy receiving this little hometown rag twice a week, if only we did receive it twice a week. The reliability of the delivery service ranks right up there with…well, it’s rank. Half the time it’s delivered late, by as much as an entire day — and sometimes it isn’t delivered at all. Frankly, I’m getting tired of calling them to tell them we didn’t receive our paper. It isn’t just us, either — on my morning walks with the dog I notice that nobody else in the neighborhood has received theirs when ours goes missing.

Then there’s the issue of having papers pile up while you’re away, which as TDavid mentioned makes a perfect burglar bulls-eye. Once when we were about to go out of town, my wife said she was going to call the paper to have them hold delivery. “No, don’t!” I said, “They’ve been delivering the paper pretty regularly for weeks now — if you touch it we’ll never see another one!” She pooh-poohed my (what was in her eyes) superstitious ravings, and went ahead with the call. After we returned from our trip, there was a pile of papers in the box. They had not stopped delivery as we had asked.

And the next Wednesday…no paper.