Book-Oven Pizza

In my valiant efforts to not act like a "Deer-in-the-headlights-can't-drive-in-snow-Virginia-driver," on Sunday, I took a different route home from my class in Alexandria to home in the F.C. In my wandering, anything but a straight line from A to B travels, I passed the Pizza Hut in Annandale. You've gotta love the Pizza Huts that extend further than just pick-up and delivery - I'm talking about the ones with the full-on restaurant dining room. With the green poker table lamp shades and the mysterious pizza buffet cart, it leaves diners with a little bit of an unsettling pizza experience. These particular branches are also most often a perfect square, dimensionally speaking, complete with a the weird-looking red roof that makes any normal building with it unmistakenbly the Hut. Even once Pizza Hut is long gone, people will assume pizza is sold within those doors because of the roof.

Greeter: "Welcome to Linens n' Things, how can we help you?"
Customer: "I'm looking for a quilt for a queen-sized bed and a large Meat Lovers..."

And across the front of the building, obstructing every single window that diners inside may want to look out of, is a brand-new, snow-covered, celebratory banner.

"BOOK-IT: 20 GREAT YEARS!"

Wow. There's a blast from the past, and a recalled life lesson that I wasn't expecting during my jaunt through this winter wonderland. I am very familiar with the Book-It. The Book-It was my friend. And before I can celebrate that fact that the Book-It is one year away from legal drinking age, I think I owe the Book-It some time here in the blogmine.

You see, Book-It was a bit of an addiction for me, and I was still only 7 years old. Here's the way it worked (and assuming there hasn't been a Communist upheaval in the past score). Pizza Hut sponsors a nationwide program to encourage the youth of the United States of America to read. Pizza Hut, knowing its core competencies, decides to offer pizza in exchange for kids across the country taking the time to flex those cranial muscles. (Pizza cutters could be a dangerous giveaway...) The rules are pretty simple. If a kid reads ten books, he gets his very own certificate good for a personal pan pizza. Personal pan pizzas, for a 7 year old, are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Which is funny, because the personal pan that contains said pizza is probably made of the same uberheavy cast iron that is used in most gold pot manufacturing. Don't ever, EVER, drop one of these on your foot. (Pizza Hut probably wouldn't pay for damages, they instead would encourage you to read a book about podiatry.)

The way it worked in Taunton Forge Elementary was at every tenth book you had to do so a book conference with one of the room mothers. This, I suppose, was Pizza Hut's method of Internal Control and Audit. Now my mom was a room mother, but I don't recall many conferences with her. I'm not saying that collusion exists when you're seven, I'm just saying it's not outside of the realm of possibilities.

In the 1987-1988 season, I read 109 books. I kid you not. I was a Book-It Master. The pin they give you (which I am pretty sure you had to wear to collect your pizza) only had room for 5 stars (50 books.) That's right, I needed a pin for each arm, and maybe some safety pins for anything past the century mark. And I read real books, man. 3rd and 4th and 5th grade level stuff. I think my minimum was 50 pages. When it came to readin', I was king.

Whaddyamean, there's a new Queen in town?

Enter Amy C. This archrival finished the year with 118 books. The two of us were a good 40 books ahead of whoever was content with the bronze. But here was the key difference between the two of us: length of book. Amy passed off a book as anything with a front and back cover with pages in between. I kid you not, she read 9 page books. Nine. And here I am, reading the first grade equivalent of Dostoyevsky. And just like that, I accepted my silver medal and 10 pizzas and walked away, never to read another book ever again.

Ok, maybe not ever again.

Today's Life Lesson: When a traumatic childhood experience happens, don't sweat it. It just gives you fuel for the blogfire 18 years later.