I've always enjoyed reading a newspaper. I have always had a subscription to one until just recently. I let it expire and didn't renew it. Why? I've always felt that I must read each day's paper from front to back. If I didn't, then I felt guilty. I think that feeling could be traced back to my childhood where we were taught to waste not want not. Finish all your food on your plate. Don't throw this or that away, ya might need it some day. So when ever I didn't go completely through the day's paper I thought I might be missing something. Cheating myself some how. Sound weird? Probably but that was the way I would feel. I let my last subscription expire because now, as a single person, I just didn't have time to read it. Unread papers would pile up, the bigger the pile the guiltier I would feel. So I cut them out. I'll still pick one up every now and then and when I do I sit down and take in each page, each article in each section. I read the ads, I look at the comics, I check the movie listings and so on and so on. But in all my time reading newspapers the thing that really got me when I read them was the announcements that they would run usually once a week. It was usually in the Sunday edition and I always thought how announcing a major event into two or three sentences some how cheapened the whole thing. For example, you see the ad announcing that Steve and Carol Lecates welcomed home a baby girl that Carol had given birth too named Katie Lynn on Thursday night at 10:00pm. She weighed 7lbs and was 13 inches long. That's it. What they DON'T tell is that Steve and Carol had been trying
for seven years to have a child and had problems conceiving a child. Steve had been checked out. He was in good working order. Carol should have been able to conceive but for some reason her body attacked the invaders when ever Steve placed them inside her, thinking that they were some high risk infection of some kind. They were even considering adopting one of those children from China or Korea or Haiti or even Russia if they had to. They had placed their name on several agencies here in the US but they were thinking they would be at retirement age when they got through the process here and become eligible. Right when they started to look at brochures of kids from those foreign countries the miracle happened. Carol got pregnant! They were ecstatic! They called their families, they called friends, they redid the den, turning it into a baby's room. Eight months and two weeks went by and one night Carol was in the kitchen rolling out a pastry dough for a beef wellington and she doubled over in pain. Screaming, in agony, crying with blood starting to run down her legs. Steve, in a panic called 911, briefly forgetting the number before coming to his senses. The dispatcher advised Steve to get her to the hospital STAT and the dispatcher would call the hospital and let them know they were on their way. The announcement left out the part about Steve almost killing them on the way to the hospital, weaving and dodging in and out of traffic, four ways flashing, horn blowing. Steve thought to himself, man I really had my mouth set on that beef wellington. Carol screaming, begging him to drive faster AND more careful or all three of them would be killed. Steve feeling guilty because he kept thinking that the cloth seats on his Toyota would be stained forever from the blood, a keepsake from this night. The ad didn't tell about them finally arriving and a team of nurses were there waiting for her and they got her on a bed and rushed her back to the ER and started working on her first to stop the bleeding and then to save the baby. They determined that the only chance to save the baby was to do a emergency c-section and they had to do it now! They worked on Carol and then BOOM, little Katie Lynn came into this world at 10:00pm (eastern standard time). Or the ad congratulating Brittney Adkins for graduating high school from her mom and dad who loved her very much. That ad leaves out the part about when Brittney
was in the 10th grade and she loathed her parents and couldn't stand to be in the same room with them. It left out the part where she had ran away one night, leaving a note that she and Paul, the biker dude that Brittney had just declared her love for and her parents went crazy, forbidding her to ever see him again. Paul was a high school drop-out that came from a rough family that lived over on the "wrong" side of town. A family of trouble makers, rift-raft, lazy cretins who wouldn't work in a pie factory, abusers of the system. A bunch of real losers. Her parents were devastated as they read her note explaining that her and Paul were in love and they were going to go far, far away so they could live their lives together free of the parental prison that she was currently living in. They were so relived when the police brought Brittney back the next day. The police found them hitchhiking, abandoning Paul's 84 Dodge pick-up truck when it broke down (again) outside of town. It left out the part about Brittney's parents begging and pleading with her to please finish school and that inheritance they had put away for her could possible arrive a little early for her IF she graduated high school. Or how about those 50th wedding anniversary announcements where it shows the couple that's been together for so long that they forgot what life was before they were married. The one's where they actually start looking like
they could be related, 1st or 2nd cousins perhaps. The names are standard names, Bill and Mildred Owens, celebrated 50 years of marriage with a party down at the church social building, thrown by their kids and close relatives. A party six months in the making. Their good friends Joe and Pat Kingsley invited them out to a fancy restaurant where they were going to treat them for their anniversary and they must dress formal for the place they were taking them. Then, coming up with a cockamamie story about needing to stop by the church real quick to show them something that the church had just purchased for the social building and they walked in and everybody screamed "Surprise!" when they walked in and Joe hits the light switch. Four people snapping pictures as soon as the lights came on, temporarily blinding them from the combination of total darkness to lights on with flashes flashing in their faces. When they regain their vision they see their kids, their grand kids, old friends, current friends, long ago forgotten friends tracked down and found through the miracle of the Internet. They shake hands, give hugs, thanking everyone for coming. There's a table with gifts on it. There's a refreshment table with a crystal punch bowl full of a red punch with pieces of fruit in it and a foam head on the surface of it. There's snack foods that the kids and close relatives worked on making for the last several days. Stories are retold. Old school friends not seen for thirty years are there. Bob and his third wife Ann flew all the way over from Washington state. They open their gifts. Then they turn the lights down and show a video one of the kids put together showing pictures of them through the years, set to sad, tear jerking music. Everyone is laughing and sniffling as they watch the past 50 years unfolding before them, condensed into a eight minute video. These are the parts NOT told in a classified ad announcement.
for seven years to have a child and had problems conceiving a child. Steve had been checked out. He was in good working order. Carol should have been able to conceive but for some reason her body attacked the invaders when ever Steve placed them inside her, thinking that they were some high risk infection of some kind. They were even considering adopting one of those children from China or Korea or Haiti or even Russia if they had to. They had placed their name on several agencies here in the US but they were thinking they would be at retirement age when they got through the process here and become eligible. Right when they started to look at brochures of kids from those foreign countries the miracle happened. Carol got pregnant! They were ecstatic! They called their families, they called friends, they redid the den, turning it into a baby's room. Eight months and two weeks went by and one night Carol was in the kitchen rolling out a pastry dough for a beef wellington and she doubled over in pain. Screaming, in agony, crying with blood starting to run down her legs. Steve, in a panic called 911, briefly forgetting the number before coming to his senses. The dispatcher advised Steve to get her to the hospital STAT and the dispatcher would call the hospital and let them know they were on their way. The announcement left out the part about Steve almost killing them on the way to the hospital, weaving and dodging in and out of traffic, four ways flashing, horn blowing. Steve thought to himself, man I really had my mouth set on that beef wellington. Carol screaming, begging him to drive faster AND more careful or all three of them would be killed. Steve feeling guilty because he kept thinking that the cloth seats on his Toyota would be stained forever from the blood, a keepsake from this night. The ad didn't tell about them finally arriving and a team of nurses were there waiting for her and they got her on a bed and rushed her back to the ER and started working on her first to stop the bleeding and then to save the baby. They determined that the only chance to save the baby was to do a emergency c-section and they had to do it now! They worked on Carol and then BOOM, little Katie Lynn came into this world at 10:00pm (eastern standard time). Or the ad congratulating Brittney Adkins for graduating high school from her mom and dad who loved her very much. That ad leaves out the part about when Brittney
was in the 10th grade and she loathed her parents and couldn't stand to be in the same room with them. It left out the part where she had ran away one night, leaving a note that she and Paul, the biker dude that Brittney had just declared her love for and her parents went crazy, forbidding her to ever see him again. Paul was a high school drop-out that came from a rough family that lived over on the "wrong" side of town. A family of trouble makers, rift-raft, lazy cretins who wouldn't work in a pie factory, abusers of the system. A bunch of real losers. Her parents were devastated as they read her note explaining that her and Paul were in love and they were going to go far, far away so they could live their lives together free of the parental prison that she was currently living in. They were so relived when the police brought Brittney back the next day. The police found them hitchhiking, abandoning Paul's 84 Dodge pick-up truck when it broke down (again) outside of town. It left out the part about Brittney's parents begging and pleading with her to please finish school and that inheritance they had put away for her could possible arrive a little early for her IF she graduated high school. Or how about those 50th wedding anniversary announcements where it shows the couple that's been together for so long that they forgot what life was before they were married. The one's where they actually start looking like 
they could be related, 1st or 2nd cousins perhaps. The names are standard names, Bill and Mildred Owens, celebrated 50 years of marriage with a party down at the church social building, thrown by their kids and close relatives. A party six months in the making. Their good friends Joe and Pat Kingsley invited them out to a fancy restaurant where they were going to treat them for their anniversary and they must dress formal for the place they were taking them. Then, coming up with a cockamamie story about needing to stop by the church real quick to show them something that the church had just purchased for the social building and they walked in and everybody screamed "Surprise!" when they walked in and Joe hits the light switch. Four people snapping pictures as soon as the lights came on, temporarily blinding them from the combination of total darkness to lights on with flashes flashing in their faces. When they regain their vision they see their kids, their grand kids, old friends, current friends, long ago forgotten friends tracked down and found through the miracle of the Internet. They shake hands, give hugs, thanking everyone for coming. There's a table with gifts on it. There's a refreshment table with a crystal punch bowl full of a red punch with pieces of fruit in it and a foam head on the surface of it. There's snack foods that the kids and close relatives worked on making for the last several days. Stories are retold. Old school friends not seen for thirty years are there. Bob and his third wife Ann flew all the way over from Washington state. They open their gifts. Then they turn the lights down and show a video one of the kids put together showing pictures of them through the years, set to sad, tear jerking music. Everyone is laughing and sniffling as they watch the past 50 years unfolding before them, condensed into a eight minute video. These are the parts NOT told in a classified ad announcement.
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