Newspaper neatness

There are certain things I would never be able to stand, and an improperly folded newspaper goes right on top of the list. It is not so much the paper itself, but rather the form and fashion in which it is delivered.There is nothing that goes better with a lovely continental breakfast than a crisp, well folded, hot off the press newspaper.

On this particularly perky saturday morning, B and myself decided to challenge ourselves with a run uphill followed by a quiet breakfast around Little Italy.
After finally picking a place (amongst the gazillion other options, each of a min. 45 min wait) we settled down and decided what to eat and treat ourselves with. I wished to delight my tingling brain cells with some news right off the press and got to the paperstand when I saw the depravity of the situation.

Behold, right in front of me, laying innocuously were atleast 5 copies of the day's chronicle and to my horror, were completely out of control. Each paper had no clue where its other supplements were.

I tried to ignore the mess around and grabbed one copy and headed back. I managed to hold my composure for sometime....simply sat, smiled and waited for my brunch to arrive. I was trying hard to forget the nagging feeling in my head abt these unruly copies of the paper. Brunch arrived while both of us were soaked in the bits of newspapers left with us. I think somewhere between the distracting taste of the pancakes and the scratching noise of the dogs outside that my attention diverted to the rest of the stack in the basket.

Now, I firmly believe that it is utterly rude of people to mess up the order of newspapers after reading them. Quite simply, when you invite guests over, I am pretty sure you would half expect them to rearrange things around in your house(mebbe I should call it mess) and leave. It is that simple. At bruncheries(you can thank me later for coining this term), the somewhat similar act with newspapers is just not acceptable. Newspapers are a part of the whole eating experience, especially on lovely weekend mornings. Shame on the people who take the pleasure out of this petty little thing(ironically, this petty little thing inspired this entire blog!).

Newspaper reading is like eating a bar of ____________ (fill it with a delight of your choice). You just can't eat half of it. The complete satisfaction comes in finishing the whole piece in one shot. Or may be it is like watching a movie. You need to have the scenes following the right order and you need to watch it in one sitting. Straight forward, ain't it? How do people miss this point, it is amazing to me..

Well, anyway, coming back to where I was, I did try. Went over to the basket and tried to put the newspapers back together in a form that was readable (much to B's horror and embarassment). It was simply not appreciated. Some scorned, others just requested copies of "just the supplements" of the papers I was trying to put together. My mission was failing. I had to accept it and sheepishly walked the remaining copies back to basket. The waitress just smiled (or was it smirked) at me..So much so for newspaper neatness.