When I graduated from the sixth grade, I was presented with two gifts. One was the right to go on to junior high, which didn't exactly thrill me since I was very comfortable in the sixth grade, having a very nice teacher by the name of Mrs. Thompson who encouraged my creative energies, and (usually, anyway) overlooked my often less than exemplary behavior. The second gift was a paper route, which my next door neighbor Timmy, who had just graduated from the eighth grade and was going on to high school and more grown-up kinds of things than afternoon paper routes, gladly handed over to me. Well, he didn't exactly hand it over to me, but he convinced me that for the measly fee of twenty dollars, which included not only the rights to his customers but also a week of free training so I could learn the route and the proper methods of newspaper tossing, watch dog avoidance, etc., he might as well have been giving it away.
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