Book It!

In honor of the first week of school, I thought I'd share a story from when I was little and participating in the Book It! program...

Every night before I went to bed, I would read for awhile to get credit for the Book It! program and earn my way towards delicious (ie gross) personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut (sidenote...my mom hated the Book It! program, because it forced her to go to Pizza Hut).

Since it went by the amount of time you read, I decided to start a stopwatch when I started reading and then stop it when I was done (you know...as if it were a race...did I mention I was an awesome kid?).

So, I grabbed my book (I believe it was either Bunnicula or The Celery Stalks at Midnight), started the timer and went about reading the book.

I read, and read, and read, and read. And before I knew it...I had finished the book! So, I hit stop on the timer and ran downstairs to tell my dad how long I'd read so he could mark it on my sheet.

I handed him the stopwatch, beaming with pride, he looked at it, then looked at me questioningly and said, "Nine minutes?"

Nine minutes?! Nine?! I'd read the whole book in nine minutes?

"Are you sure?" I said. "It sure felt like more than an hour. I read the whole book!"

He turned around the stopwatch and showed it to me. Sure enough, it said nine minutes. How in the...what had happened? I went up to bed, very confused and a little sad that only nine minutes went towards my personal pan pizza.

*only later did I find out that the stopwatch rolls over after 99 minutes and restarts...so I actually read 108 minutes...but I didn't figure that out until later*