The man who delivers my newspaper every morning is someone I meet once a month, when he comes to collect the subscription money. Which is fine by me. Every day, I hear a muted thud on my door when he sticks in the folded paper into the door latch. What I also hear is a rapid slap-slap of rubber slippers on the staircase. He takes the lift to the topmost floor of the building and progresses downwards.
One morning, when I was up and out way before my usual time, I caught him on his delivery round just as I was getting into the lift at my floor. He was hurtling down the steps from the floor above to mine at a manic speed (hence the slap-slap of slippers), with a stack of papers held under his left arm, and before I could even blink he had taken one set of papers from that stack with his right hand, deftly folded it into a cone, and stuck it with one swift and neat movement into the latch of my door. All this while he continued to hurtle down and, subsequently, turn the bend in the stairs.
That was very impressive hand-eye-brain-feet coordination.
But newspaper vendors tend to have such tricks up their sleeves. One of the most enduring images from childhood is that of the newspaper guy throwing rolled (and tied) papers up to the balconies of homes. So, the guy would park his bicycle somewhere, roll up newspapers individually (this was when households got one newspaper each instead of a truckload of them every morning) and tie them up with pieces of yarn. He would then proceed to chuck the newspapers up to the balconies of different homes--balconies on the first floor, on the second floor even; buildings didn't go much higher than that then. I would stand at my school bus stop and gape as the roll of newspaper glided up the length of a building, seemed to pause in mid-air just as it reached the edge of the balcony, elegantly curved over the balcony railing (like a pole-vaulter crossing the horizontal bar) and landed on the balcony floor, usually at a pair of waiting feet. Again and again the vendor would throw up paper rolls, and each time it would be an act to evoke the greatest of wonder and awe in me.
Where I live, buildings rarely have open balconies. And even if they do, they would probably be on the 22nd floor, or something like that. Can't quite chuck newspaper rolls that high, can you? Hence the likes of my vendor here, manically running down the staircase, making paper cones and snagging them in door latches.
They are inventive that way.
