Why only the Sunday paper

I go to the gas station by my house to get a Sunday paper just about every Sunday. The guy at the gas station knows that when he sees me, I am there to buy just a Sunday paper. He notices when I've missed a week. It's our thing.

One time he got brave and asked me why I only buy the paper and nothing else. I guess it's odd that I only go to that gas station for a paper, and only once a week, and I never buy anything else there. Not even gas.

Today he asked me why I only get a Sunday paper.

There are lots of reasons:

It's my Sunday morning ritual to sit in my chair with my coffee to read the paper. Without this as part of my weekly routine, I might surely crumble. I literally get excited when I leave the house to go get my paper. I get the coffee going, then I go get my paper, and by the time I get home my coffee is ready.

I also like physically reading a paper. I am strapped to a computer pretty much all day every day, either at work or at home. I get my news online most days. But on Sundays, I like to kick it old school with a real, live newspaper.

There's also the sale papers. I love those. I don't need to buy anything, but I love seeing what's on sale. Especially at Target. That's the best sale paper in the world.

But I didn't explain all of that to my gas station friend. Instead, I said, "I don't care about news the rest of the week."

He found that to be funny.

Maybe next week I'll tell him that I can't actually read but that I use the newspapers to sleep under. Or that I use the Sunday paper to cut out letters to paste together threatening ransom notes to send out to random people in the phonebook.

C.T.