I Thought My Stepfather Was a Paperboy

I Thought My Stepfather Was a Paperboy …Until the Truth Came Out

I can still picture him.

Every morning—rain or shine, even when the cold dropped below freezing and the neighborhood lay silent under fresh snow—there was Patrick, my stepfather, pedaling his slightly oversized bicycle down the street. He was seventy years old, maybe older, wrapped in layers, steadying a canvas bag stuffed with newspapers.

He was still a paperboy.

And I was embarrassed.

Not because there’s anything shameful about delivering newspapers. There isn’t. But because of what it seemed to say about him—and, if I’m being honest, what I worried it said about me.

I worked in corporate finance. I lived in a nice city apartment. When coworkers asked what my parents did, I mumbled something vague about being “retired” and changed the subject as quickly as I could. Seventy years old, tossing papers onto damp lawns before sunrise—it felt like a quiet kind of defeat. Like I hadn’t accomplished enough to give him a different ending.

Patrick never acted as if he noticed my discomfort. He would just smile, gentle as always, and say, “It’s the morning air, Alistair. Keeps the rust off.”

But I saw the truth anyway—the way he leaned on his left knee when he got off the bike, the brief flash of pain he tried to hide as he climbed the front steps. It was hard on him. Too hard.

I tried everything to make him quit. I offered to pay his bills. I suggested hobbies. I even bought him an absurdly expensive electric bike, which he thanked me for—and then left untouched in the garage.