Peddle Your Papers

My Dad has always been a big fan of newspapers. The only thing he likes more than reading newspapers, is clipping articles out of them. He has enjoyed this pastime since I was a little kid. However, I wasn't on the receiving end of his hard work until I went off to college.

Every week or so, my Dad would send an envelope filled with clippings. They would usually be news of the weird type articles about people living under the subway system or a woman who carved lard sculptures with her teeth or any other number of strange and wonderful things he could get his hands on.

My roommate loved these clippings. She thought it was especially comical when my Dad would send an envelope with only clippings - no letter or anything else would be included. I never really thought about that until she called it to my attention.

He still continues to mail clippings to me periodically. Although my Dad does like to email me articles, he still sends the odd packet of clippings now and then.

The weirdest packet I've ever gotten from him arrived a couple months ago. He's living in Belgium right now, so he collected the labels off of food that he'd eaten. I'm not talking about soup cans, I'm talking about the label that would go on a package of meat or produce that is stuck to the cellophane wrapping. He had cut out the labels from bags of carrots, lettuce, rabbit meat, pheasant, cauliflower and a handful of other things. He had also attached Post-It notes to translate the things that I don't know the French words for. Helpful, no?

My boyfriend thought my Dad had finally gone around the bend when this most recent envelope of clippings with the food labels arrived. But after the box of weird Christmas presents came in December, I have learned not to be surprised by the level of strange when it comes to my Dad. I was just glad he didn't actually send me the actual rabbit meat.