Pizza Day!

It's scientifically proven that the human race will work harder when there's a reward involved. It's a commonly held fact that no person can resist free pizza. Put the two together and whatta' 'ya get? The Pizza Hut Book-It program!

Far back in the misty time known as "The '80's" I was a plucky 'lil learner at Lake Contrary Elementary, go Golden Bears! One golden year, I'm pretty sure it was Mrs. Lysaught in the 4th grade, a simple brown box was opened up before us. As we crowded about the box it's contents were tipped onto a table and each of us received the sweetest holographic rainbow button you ever did see!

The deal was simple, read six books a quarter and you got your very own personal pan pizza as well as six rockin' puffy stickers that you could adorn your button with. Obviously this idea is about as gold as those amazing glass tumblers they put out. But while I'm pretty sure this is a national phenomenon, let me assure you that it was made all the sweeter by the fact that our south end Pizza Hut was pretty much the classical definition of late 80's bad ass.

We're talking:
Frosted glass windows, the red hooker lights that hung from the ceiling with velvet ropes, throne like oaken chairs that complimented the oak and puffy-vinyl tables and those ovens that made it just a little extra crispy while also flooding a three block radius with the frenzy inducing scent of buttery crust on a busy Friday night. You even walk a corridor like hallway after you enter, only this isn't a green mile you're walking, rather the red brick road to oven baked delicious...yeah it's a pretty sweet Pizza Hut...even with all these "modern renovations" they've installed over the years.

For me, cash in was always a Friday night with my cousin Brandy. We'd pile into whatever station wagon Grandma Bett was driving at the time and go nail that golden delicious like starving heathens at the buffet of kings. Somewhere along the way they stopped giving us pizzas for reading though, and it's usually about that time that we go from a little kid nation of readers to an 'us versus them' adult philosophy regarding the value of literature.

Most schools don't even do Book-It anymore, my daughters doesn't. At the high school level we try to force kids to read with twenty minutes of punishment known as 'sustained silent reading', in which time a hostage nation of students idly thumb through whatever was at the top of the pile. Progressive learning is one thing, but didn't we already stumble upon gold with the idea of free pizza?

Even in "this economy" a personal pan pizza for every student can't cost that much. And rockin' holographic rainbow buttons are a negligible public relations expense. What if we expanded this to the adult level through a local library program? Adults read books or read books to children, they do this six times within six months and they get a free personal pan pizza.

I for one would still wear a holographic rainbow button if I had it.