Tim woke up when his alarm clock started ringing in it's annoying way. He groaned loudly, cursing himself for smoking too much weed the night before. Moderation was definitely not his strong point, and that was the truth.
He had assumed that college would be different. His schedule would be his to set and when not in school, he could party all he wanted. Unfortunately, he was right, it was different. Especially when you were 21, still hadn't declared a major and lived under your parents roof. Things became different all right, when they cut the funds off.
The den was filled with stacked newspapers as Tim struggled to roll them all up and stick them into their plastic sleeves. His parents had all but forced him to get a job and the only thing he could find was delivering newspapers at the crack of dawn. Usually it wasn't so bad, but apparently the newspaper company wasn't able to get the papers rolled and inserted into the sleeves before dropping them at his door. Now, he was running late as he struggled to get them stuffed as quickly as possible.
Just as he finished stuffing the last paper, he heard the clock in the living room chime at 5:30 am. He was now 30 minutes behind his scheduled route and it was tough enough getting it done normally, today it was going to be all but impossible. Grabbing everything up, he hurried out the door and shoved all the papers into his passenger seat.
Tim checked his watch as he rolled out of the driveway. It was 5:35 am and that meant he had 25 minutes to do what he usually did in an hour. He stepped on the gas, peeling out on the wet road and not caring if he woke up the rest of the neighborhood. He had a job to do.
Red lights and stop signs were nothing more than an annoyance as he tore through the neighborhoods as fast as he could. He stopped at each house, quickly tossing the paper into their drive before racing on to his next destination. Everywhere he went someone was yelling at him, shouting obscenities, or giving him rude gestures due to his fast driving and reckless nature.
Halfway through the route, he checked his watch again. It was 5:50 am and he only had 10 minutes left to do the rest of the route. He fortified his will, checked his rearview mirrors for any sign of cop cars and slammed down on the gas pedal.
Tim literally flew through all the neighborhoods, swerving around cars leaving for the day and ignoring the blaring horns as he cut through side streets and ran red lights. If a cop had been around, he was almost certain he would have lost his license indefinitely, but a job is a job. His father was always telling him that he never followed through with anything, this time Tim was proud to say his father was wrong.
He glanced over at his passenger seat and happily noted that there were only two papers left to be delivered. Tim quickly pulled up to the second to the last house and tossed the paper at old Mr. Grimly. He laughed out loud when the paper hit the old man square in the crotch, he hadn't intended to hit the man, but he had to admit the result was funny. As he pulled off, he heard Mr. Grimly shouting about "young whippersnappers."
Tim slowed down as he pulled down the last road on his route and he looked at his watch... 6:00 am. Now that was something to be proud of. He had accomplished an hour long paper route in 25 minutes. It was a personal record, but one that he hoped never to have to do again. He made a mental note to start getting up earlier in the morning, so he wasn't so pressed to make it to the last house by 6:00 am.