Future Mailman

The upcoming generation of young people, from time to time, do something extraordinary in my eyes, and occasionally exceed my expectations of them. I will admit, I'm somewhat critical of the 'gaming' generation, just as my elders were critical of my generation. When we see them take advantage of the latest innovations to make life easier, it makes them suspect, and we feel they are lazy, or looking for the simpler solution, rather than getting results through hard work. That might be true, or they might be smarter. Regardless, one such young man who has amazed me is our paper boy. He's in his early teens, and though I don't know him personally, he seems like your 'run of the mill' 15 year old boy. Recently, with the amount of snow dumped on us, it has crippled the city. Snow plows are sitting until the worst is passed, banks are closed, other public operation are on hold, linemen for the utilities can't get to the locations to fix the problems, everything has just froze to a standstill. The exception - our paper boy. I fully did not expect to receive our newspaper yesterday due to the dangerous conditions, but to my surprise, as I'm out trying to tunnel a path through the winter wonderland, there sits my newspaper! After being slightly in awe, I analyzed this kid in my mind. He seems to have that 'attack the task at hand' mentality. Under normal conditions, I'm usually just pulling out of stage 2 REM sleep, as I hear noise coming from my front porch, which usually stirs the dog to action. When I say, "action", I mean he lifts his head from his pillow to let out a couple of mandatory barks, because that's what he's supposed to do. Then he falls back asleep for a couple more hours. Enough about the faux canine. The paperboy surpasses the mailman, when it comes to reliability. It doesn't hurt matters that he's built kind of like a snow plow. I'm sure this young man would make a fine employee for whatever he decides to do with his life. I would only hope he would get a job with the US mail, and become our future mailman.