Warbler said:
doubleKO, why do you object to getting something for free?
Besides having to throw the annoying things away (I don't recycle, but I feel my miniscule amount of paper trash makes up for it), you have to walk out into the driveway/lawn everyday and pick them up. If you forget them for a couple of days and get a hard rain... it is pretty awful.
Reminds me of back when I was married. I was having breakfast with my father-in-law at an Indian casino out in the middle of the desert in New Mexico (don't ask). An older Native America gentleman was having breakfast a couple of tables over and had just finished with his paper and offered it to us. I didn't feel the need to read about the local on goings and my father-in-law didn't know a lick of English and wouldn't be able to read it anyway, so I politely declined it and he passed it off on someone else. My father-in-law stared at me for a few moments, then told me, "Whenever someone offers you a newspaper, you need to take it." He never explained why, but it was spoken with grave matter-of-fact authority. This was a little old man with an epic and frightening past that'd I'd never live up to, done things I could never dream of, and would never want to do. I wasn't about to question his words.
Now every time I am offered a newspaper, I still politely decline it, but his words echo in my head. I find myself wondering what his answer would have been if I had asked him why. I imagine it would have been either about manners, or about the practicality of having an inky wad of low quality paper at your disposal. Every time I decline a paper a very faint and short lived wave of concern that I am being rude or missing out on making some badass makeshift weapon rolls over me.
