I remember when I was a kid and first moved to Texas, I was amazed by the Accelerated Reader program. It basically worked like this - it gave every book in its system a point value which was largely correlated by the length of the book, and then after you read the book, you can take a 10 question computer quiz, with your final point total being the point value of the book times the percentage of questions you got right.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? To my 10 year old self, AR was like crack. I didn't get to elementary school until second semester, which meant that I was a semester behind in points from everyone. It was probably around this time that I began living life by the motto: "You can't come back until you've been behind" (see, for example, my senior year quotes from college). Except then I didn't drink, so AR was like the 10 year old's equivalent of beer pong.
I also learned about opportunity costs then. Instead of going for the Holy Grail of AR books, Little Women (36 points), I figured I could read 18 2-point books, such as Little T Learns to Share (I'd be stunned if that book was 2 points. Probably like half a point), in the same amount of time, and get all the questions right, instead of getting 80% on Little freakin Woman. Put another way, I was like the kids in South Park killing all the boars to level up their points in World of Warcraft. Start at the 10:30 mark:
South Park - Make Love, Not Warcraft
DARK RIDER | MySpace Video
Doing that took forever, but I was fairly pleased with myself when all was said and done.
The reason I'm posting this? Someone who I know on facebook just posted - "HAHA! The Harry Potter Series = 183 points on AR."
Dammit Harry Potter - I worked so hard for my points and now some snot-nosed kid who hits Harry Potter and Twilight will have like 400 points in one fell swoop. Bullshit!
And yes, I am getting indignant over something that happened almost a decade and a half ago. So you can take your snark and stuff it. Like so:
Ha, I remember AR...
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