Blog Number 75

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that my son was recording how many minutes he read each day.  He has a log where he records this and keeps a running total for the 6 weeks session.  Well the session is over and even though he logged over 500 minutes which I thought was impressive for an 8 year old, he has committed himself to do over 600 for the next 6 week session.

His higher goal is due in part to the fact that he did not finish near the top in his class for total minutes read.  There were a few students that claimed to have read over 1,000 minutes.  This is roughly 25 minutes per day (40 minutes per day for the kid who actually won).  I don't know if I believe this or not but my son is committed to reading more each day and I am all for that.

I was telling him tonight about a similar contest that we had while I was in 5th grade.  We did not record our minutes but rather how many books we had read.  The competition lasted all year and the winners were to receive prizes.  You could check out books from the school library and your parent had to write a note stating that you had read a book.  I remember my mother dutifully writing notes as I completed each book.  I even complained that her notes were too plain (Dear Teacher, Jon read this book, signed - Jon's Mom).  I had read a book about the mail system and she then wrote a longer note detailing that I enjoyed the book since my dad worked for the post office.

Anyway, the year came to a close and I was a few books ahead of the nearest boy.  I think I had read something like 80 books.  There were a few girls in the 100's but I had no interest in beating them.  The day finally came when they were passing out the awards and when the called my name I went to the front of the class.  I was then handed my prize.

It was a stupid book!  I could not believe it!  The one thing I did NOT want to see was another book!  I remember thinking how much the teachers did not understand kids.  It was like having a broccoli eating contest with the winner getting more broccoli.  Believe it or not, when I asked my son what the leaders win for his contest, he said it was also a book.  Insane!

I never read the book I won by the way.  I kept it for about 15 years but only because my teacher signed the inside of it and I really liked that teacher.  But there was no way I was ever going to read that book, out of sheer principle.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon