A few months ago my husband stared at me while I was doing this puzzle called "Cryptoquip" in my local newspaper, The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Robert said, "I think you are the only person outside of a nursing home who starts off her day at five in the morning doing 'Cryptoquip.' You should wait to do that until you're 90."
I said nothing because I knew what was coming. It was one of those WE NEED TO ECONOMIZE OR WE'LL WIND UP IN THE GUTTER lectures where Robert suggests I am ruining us financially by purchasing luxuries only billionaires can afford such as Half and Half and brand name coffee.
Robert was cagey. He told me how we could continue our subscription to The Cincinnati Enquirer online. He called it a "digital subscription." We would waste less paper. I could read every article I wanted. And all I would have to renounce would be the two crossword puzzles and my beloved Cryptoquip.
I said, "What about the New York Times? You're getting rid of that too?"
Oh THAT paper was different. Robert said that he was OUTRAGED I'd suggest getting rid of his beloved New York Times.
I didn't want to switch from a real daily newspaper to an online paper. There is something nice listening to the birds wake up while reading my paper in my hands. I love everything: the obituaries where I can muse about whether I am older or younger than the deceased. The weird local crimes mothers read and think, "Hmmm, someone stole the street sign for 'Dick Street'? I better go look in my kids' bedrooms."
Robert cancelled our REAL subscription to The Cincinnati Enquirer and got us the DIGITAL subscription.
Every morning my dog Teddie was sad. She was used to carrying in TWO newspapers from our driveway and getting TWO treats.
And I was sad. I'd never know again who died, what movies were playing, what new theatre was going on thatJackie Demalinehad reviewed, what cool restaurants my friendPolly Campbellhad just written about.
No more Cryptoquip. No easy crosswords where you are asked for a four-letter word on a red octagonal sign that means you should halt your car. All I'd have would be the super hard New York Times puzzles that make me feel stupid.
And then the amazing thing happened!This week, the Cincinnati Enquirer won the Pulitzer Prize for its "Seven Days of Heroin: This is What an Epidemic Looks Like."
Robert suddenly felt deeply ashamed. Two of our closest friends have lost their brilliant, talented kids to heroin. We have known adults with amazing careers who have gotten addicted to heroin.
I lost a friend who survived his cancer but died when his doctor stopped giving him pain pills and he was forced to switch to street drugs.
This incredible reporting was the result of MORE THAN 60 REPORTERS – every reporter on the staff – going around and spending a week hanging out with 911 dispatchers, doctors, judges, heroin addicts, grieving parents, school teachers, neighbors, treatment facility psychologists, pediatricians, teenagers in parks, toddlers staring at parents who had moved from pain meds to heroin.
I will always remember the day two years ago at Doris Day Dog Park when I saw a pretty young girl sitting in a car with her puppy.
I was standing in the dog park about 20 feet from the girl tossing a ball for my dog, and I saw the puppy and the girl looking at me and my dog. The moment I looked at the girl I knew she was waiting for her dealer.
The puppy LONGED to come play, to get out of its car. It wagged its tail at my dog. It wanted so much to be a REAL dog who could play.
I thought about walking over to the girl and saying, "Why don't you pass your puppy over the fence? Let me have him play for five minutes and then I'll hand him back to you."
But I didn't...because I was scared somehow of this skinny, pretty, sad girl waiting for heroin.
What the Pulitzer Prize-winning writers taught us with this amazing reporting is to feel some empathy, to recognize that kids on heroin didn't want to become addicts. The reporters taught us to care.
And the reporters told us to go through our medicine cabinets and make sure we don't keep any pills that are narcotics that any child or teenager could take, not realizing where these pills can take kids.
Congratulations to my local paper for their well-deserved Pulitzer Prize.
I hope you have a daily newspaper that keeps you informed about where you live. I am thrilled that my husband agreed he's going to get our real-life PAPER back.
I have missed the brilliant reporting...and my Cryptoquip.
Mainly, I have missed the part of myself that realizes I really should treat all people as human beings, and I hope next time I see a puppy in a car with someone on heroin I'll realize that person is still a human being who loves her dog and would have let her dog come out and play.
Do you still have your local paper? Do you get it? Do you read it in the flesh or online? And if you don't get it, do you miss it?
And thanks, Robert, for deciding to resubscribe to the REAL, ink-smudged daily paper. I promise I won't buy Starbucks anymore.
Claudia Reilly lives in Clifton.
Subscribe:Support Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism with a digital subscription to The Enquirer/Ci
