Man vs. Beast
I’d been doing my paper round from the age of thirteen. Three long years had passed since the first day that I strapped on the orange carry bag of my youthful entrepreneurial dreams. I had, in my mind, built empires from which my princely £10 a week would be constructed, and looked in to the future convinced that this would be the start of great, great things.

However, I had a nemesis. A thorn in my side, if you will. A Yorkshire Terrier.

Every day for three years I trudged around my route – down long lanes, up big hills, in rain, in snow, in ice, in wind – and every day this little bleeder made my morning a misery. Every single morning, without fail, as I slipped the paper through the letterbox the terrier would run down the hall, grab the paper from the other side, and tear it out of my hand.

This would invariably get me in trouble with Mrs. Patel, for delivering a torn paper. No matter how much I insisted the dog was to blame, the cost of each copy of The Sun ruined was always deducted from my wage.

So now I was down to (at most) £9.80 a week.

Over the years the dog would vary its attacks – sometimes biting my ankles, or leaping out of rose bushes, or just plain chasing me (at that point, I really didn’t like dogs); but it would always return to its favourite annoyance of biting the paper out of my hand, and losing me another 20p in to the bargain.

It came, eventually, to the time where being a paperboy wasn’t seemly. It wasn’t a good line to use to chat up girls in bars with – indeed, I couldn’t afford to go to bars because the fucking dog was doing me out of up to 10% of my wages every week. Over the coming week I hatched my plan.

As I approached the house, I quietly placed my bike on the floor. On my tiptoes, I crept up to the house, making sure I looked down the side to see the rear door closed. Approaching the front door like the SAS approached the Iranian Embassy (only with less explosives and guns), I glanced through the mottled glass window in the door, and saw the shape of the dog at the end of the hall, waiting for me.

I crouched down. Slowly, oh so very slowly, I opened the letterbox. Looking through, I saw the dog was still there. I poked the very tip of the paper through the slot. I watched as the dog leapt to its feet and grinned as it tore down the hallway.

And then, at the critical moment, I withdrew.

There was a light thud, and a small whimper. Flicking the letterbox up, I saw the dog running in the opposite direction, back to its basket.

Claiming victory, I returned to the newsagents. I quit there and then, realising that while I had won the battle, the dog had most certainly won the war.
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Thu 22 May 2008, 12:44, Reply)