Tonight, I was sorting through old newspapers, deciding which ones to throw and which to keep. Don’t ask. I’m old fashioned that way.
And because I was doing this, I was actually transported back in time to my days as a student in an all girls Catholic school.
Each year, when I was in elementary, the entire school would hold a newspaper drive. Everyone would bring in old newspapers from back home and you’d get merit points for the newspapers that you’d bring for homeroom. At the end of the month (I don’t exactly remember when), the whole class tallies the newspaper stacks using a giant ruler to measure the height. If I remember correctly, and my memory is fuzzy on this part, the winning section got a prize. The newspapers are then sold to a recycling center by the kilo and the money funding school projects.
I diligently brought newspapers to school. My mom was an avid newspaper reader, at least bringing home two a day from the office, and that would add up to a sizable stack by the time the campaign rolled around.
As I had a younger sister so we had to split the newspapers at home equally. Still, it was still nothing to sniff at, even minus household consumption usage for starting the grill, cleaning mirrors and wrapping fish, among other things.
But no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t the winner of the class when it came to bringing the most newspapers. I couldn’t figure this out. People with more siblings than I, who I didn’t think read newspapers at home, were bringing newspapers by the stack.
And then I learned one of life’s important lessons at this age, when I was still naive in my thinking that if you were diligent enough, you just might win the newspaper drive. There were signs that the rich classmates of mine, the ones who had more siblings than I and whose parents probably didn’t even read the papers daily, actually bought their stash by the inch.
There were no rules that said one couldn’t buy newspapers to bring to the newspaper drive. The school’s objective was to raise funds, after all. And how would you know if someone bought newspapers to donate, right? (Except that sometimes one whole stack would contain the same edition).
So that was one of the first lessons in life for me. I attempted to beg my parents to buy me some but no dice. (When I was younger, I did think most of the time that it was a pain in the ass to have parents who always wanted you to do the right thing. That lecture came out of my ears with the number of times it got said again and again. But when you get older, you get it.)
Another lesson I learned was there are ways to beat an illogical system. Since the papers were being sold by weight, but measured by height for contest purposes, then if we actually separated the spread of the papers, it could help increase how tall the stack would be when measured. Or at least, that’s what we thought.
Then there was the Chinese-style battle plan. In the beginning, don’t reveal all your firepower. Every class could see how the others were doing in terms of the height of the newspapers because they were stacked up next to the blackboard. So one could pretty much gauge how one fared relative to the others, which was a cause of insecurity if your section lagged behind. But on the last day, then those who had the secret stacks would, in the end, bring out all their ammo, in effect, surprising the competition.
And now that I am older, I have learned another lesson, looking back. The world is round. Those of us who were able to coast by because they had the means to, well, let’s just say that you eventually find out that even if it can buy you a whole stack of newspapers and momentary popularity, money isn’t really everything.
