I bought a newspaper today for the first time in many years.  I don’t know what exactly came over me, but I wanted to sit at my kitchen table and read the paper over lunch.

I grew up with a paper in my home we switched papers a lot, but the LA times was always my favorite.  My favorite section was the Sunday fashion, at the tender age of 13 I knew I would never wear any of what was printed, but I liked feeling like I *knew* what was fashionable.  Sunday mornings were a competition between my Dad and I over who would get to the Sunday comics first (even if I was first he would usually invoke his fatherly authority to read them before me).

We don’t subscribe to the newspaper anymore…we used to before they went under.   Now the only option in town is “the other paper”.  My husband doesn’t like the other paper, its too biased for his taste.   Me I read for news, I can read between the opinions and slants. (Although, I am not so naive as to not noticed which news stories are covered and which aren’t.)  One of the main reasons we don’t subscribe is because my husband is an avid online news reader, and he simply has no need for a one town newspaper.

Me, I have no interest in reading my news online.  I like to pour through my news slowly over breakfast, lunch and in between the spoonfuls of food I feed the baby.  I can’t do any of that sitting in an awkward chair at a desk, it is simply not the same.

I think I bought the paper today because I was tired of sitting in the dark….tired of looking like an airhead when my father talks to me about current events I have never heard of.  Tired of hearing whats going on in my community from eavesdropping on the other moms at the park.  Tired of not setting a better example for my kids.

I don’t get my news from the local media either, I can’t handle the local evening news (and really who has the time to watch Katie Couric whilst feeding a family of 5?).  The local news does 2 things to me, it scares the living crap out of me, making me talk seriously with Aaron about taking the kids and moving to an island somewhere and living Swiss Family Robinson style (minus the pirates thank you very much!).  Or, the local news depresses me…stories every summer of innocent little children drowning in their own backyards, I get in such funks of sadness that I have told Aaron if he catches me watching the evening news to turn it off!

The black and white print of a newspaper strips some of the raw emotion out of stories, allowing me to read them and compartmentalize them as news, not tragedies that I need to mourn personally.  I want to lay on the couch with the folded paper in my hands reading the end of a front page story.  I want to fill in the crossword puzzle (or at least attempt it) while I wait for the kids everyday. I miss reading the paper…

The next time I see those newspaper guys at the grocery store hawking subscriptions, I’m forking over the money and ordering the paper.

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