Competitive, Bloodthirsty Reading

People who read as a hobby don’t get the chance to “win” via that hobby very often.  For all the junior high days in which teachers, parents, and coaches reiterated that literacy was the most important thing in the world, it was the athletes, the artists, the never-missed-a-days (big woop on that one) who got all the shiny trophies and ribbons. 

But there were the rare exceptions.  For me, the first happened in the second grade — that illustrious bastion of healthy habits known as Pizza Hut launched its Book-It Program. (Remember that?  Turns out they still have it!)  Here’s how it worked (then, anyway): 

1.  You read a book.  Any book.  For each book you finished, you got to fill in a circle on a chart at the front of the classroom.

2.  When you’d filled five circles, you got a gift certificate good for a free personal pan pizza.

Oh, but the glory didn’t end there my friends.  I begged my parents to take me to Pizza Hut the night I earned my first certificate (ahem…first in the class, of course).  And when I arrived, the waitress presented me with the coveted Book-It button.  It had room for five star stickers at the top, one for each Pizza you earned.  And it was a little bit like a medal.  Really, it was.  Anyway…

I planned on wearing my button to school the next day, but I forgot.  No problem.  Everyone else in the class was only on, like, their third book circle on the classroom chart, so I could wear it the next day and still be F-I-R-S-T. 

But then Tonya Reemsma walked into Miss Gallegher’s classroom.  Tonya, who had only one circle filled in on the chart.  And that was for the book Miss Gallegher gave everyone automatic credit for, because she read it to the whole class.  Plus (though no one dared mention it), Tonya was in a special reading group that hadn’t exactly moved on to reading real books yet.  They read these pamphlet-type things, and Miss Gallegher said that was as good as a book to them. 

Of course, I did not point out the distinction.  I did not even think of doing so.  I was very thankful for all the books that I was able to read.  But I was seven.  And my little sister had just gotten a shiny gold trophy for tee-ball and…DAMMIT!  Deep, deep (I mean waaaay deep) down, I wanted to shriek: “It’s not called FLASHCARD-IT!!!!!!!!  And you can’t count a book just because you sat there and an adult read it to you.  In that case, I’ve read the entire Bible, probably about fifty times!” 

But I composed my self.  I steeled my ankles inside my Kangaroo tennis shoes, straightened my jumper, and calmly asked Miss Tonya (picture Gollum in pigtails; I’m sure that’s how I looked when I did this):  “Where did you get that?”

She said that she had gone to Pizza Hut the night before, too (I didn’t see her there…hmmmm).  And when she told the waitress she was participating in Book-It, the woman had just gone ahead and given her the button.  (Yes, thank you Pizza Hut employees for your contribution to the death of literacy.)  It didn’t have any stars marked, though.  It was blank.  But it was still a trophy. 

Over the years, my teachers would throw other quasi-competitive reading “competitions,” but none carried quite the bloodthirsty fury of that first round of Book-It.  And even I lost my drive for that after I figured out you couldn’t get eny higher honor than that button.  That button was it. 

A few years later, when Meg was in the third grade, her class had its own reading competition.  It was a national thing, called “Beyond Books” or something like that.  All you had to do for that one was make a list of all the books you’d read.  But mom and Meg found a loophole, see.  They discovered that the rules didn’t specify the books had to have been read within the contest period.  So they made a list of every book Meg had ever read in her whole entire life (which was a lot by that point, believe it or not, if you counted all the teeny little learning books that kids read in the beginning).  Meg was so proud when, midway into the contest, she shared her list “so far” with her classmates.

That was a mistake.  From then on, everyone was on to the trick.  And a few individuals (including…ahem…the eventual “winner”)  evidently interpreted the lack of a time frame in the rules to include all the books they had read or might read in the future.  At least, I think that’s why a certain little snot named Emily Franklin included A Farewell to Arms in her list.  Surely, she didn’t just copy the titles from her parents’ bookshelf.  She wouldn’t have had time to do all that!  Not with finishing The Owner’s Manual for the Whirpool Electric Washer, and all.       

Meg came home furious the day that Emily was crowned Most Literate of All.  Everyone found the contest outcome a little dubious, but no teacher in America wanted to get into a parental battle over whether a child had actually read a certain book.  You see, that would imply that a teacher didn’t necessarily think the child had the capability to read a certain book.  And if you saw this Emily chick and her formidable mother (lots of sweaters with embroidered apples and chalkboards worn to the parent-teacher conferences, even though she wasn’t a teacher), you’d sooner “imply” that they both had venereal disease.  The outcome was final.  

Meg cried, and when Mom, terribly proud of her and hurt to see her so upset, asked what the prize was, Meg muttered: “Th..the beaver pencil.”

“Um…wha??”

“A pencil that a beaver bit off of.  The wildlife lady brought it and Miss Forest kept it for the prize.”

Mom couldn’t duplicate that one, but I think she sat back and relished the way that her child and others had clawed, fought, lied, and battled their way to being the “most well read” in the class. 

Will it ever be that way again?  I don’t know.  I read somewhere that Pizza Hut is changing its name to The Hut to attract its waning hip, young crowd, and something tells me that means Book-It will also end up a casualty of coolness. 

Oh well.  Hey, at least us nerds still have the St. Jude Math-a-Thon.  Though I was never going to win that one…   

                   

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