On Pizza & Reading

Technology is ruining our lives!

Raise your hand if you’ve heard that before, that technology is ruining our eyesight, mental health, productivity, etc. Good, I’m not alone. I used to be of the mindset that with a little practice and mindful responsibility, we could easily limit our use and intake of technology. However, with the ongoing pandemic, that line of thinking has gone straight out the window.

School, entertainment, work, and even casual coffee dates with friends and loved ones now happen exclusively through our screens. Before the pandemic, I’d have a few hours a day commuting to and from work, cooking, etc. where I was able to do things other than stare at a screen. Now, I spend 8 hours a day working in front of my computer, followed by a few more hours of “unwinding” in front of my computer watching the latest shows while I aimlessly doom scroll through Twitter on the side. With work and home life becoming increasingly blurred, there’s no respite for the weary.

One of the things that I wanted to do this year was get back into reading more. Having just finished my post-grad Certificate in HR Management, which involved reading thick textbooks, my love for recreational reading had been almost entirely squashed. But I needed a way to do something that didn’t involve even more screen time, and I wasn’t about to get into baking sourdough bread.

I grew up in a household full of books. Every year, my mom would request my brother and I to build a few more bookshelves (we currently have 23 scattered throughout my parent’s house) to accommodate the ever-increasing number of books entering our home. I loved how with some authors, I could so easily picture the worlds that they were painting with their words inside my head, and if I closed my eyes, it was almost as if I was transported there for a brief moment. It sounds silly, but I remember more good books as events in my life than I do any other form of entertainment.

So, when it came time to think of what to get my nephew for Christmas this year, my immediate thought was to get him a boatload of books. Some of my favourites at his age were the Captain Underpants series, so my girlfriend and I got him the entire box set. I had also wanted to get the Ultimate Spiderman Series for him, since comics were a great entry point into the world of reading for me as well, but those are incredibly hard to find. But knowing that my nephew is a member of Generation Alpha (born after 2010), he’s gone his whole life knowing the wonders of technology without knowing what it was like before we were this hyper connected. Case in point, when he was about 2 years old, he was so confused that the watch on my wrist wouldn’t respond to his tiny fingers, in that he couldn’t understand why it wasn’t “smart”.

I really wanted to instill in my nephew the love for reading I had when I was a kid, and when thinking about my own experiences, I had a vivid memory of this program in the mid-90s where if you read 10 books, you’d get a coupon for a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. I told my girlfriend about this, and we ended up creating our own version of it since I couldn’t remember what it was called for the life of me. Fast forward to December 27, 2020, and I saw this tweet, which caused an avalanche of nostalgia and excitement.

Are y'all this old? pic.twitter.com/pSQViMfHPU

— $aint $mith 🕊 (@SaintSmith_) December 27, 2020

For those not in the know, the Book It! program was largely a scheme run by Pizza Hut to get kids into their restaurants in the 80s and 90s. As a total nerd, I was going to read those books anyway, so the idea of a pizza at the end was just a great bonus. The one year I participated in the program, I ended up reading so many books that my mom told me she had to fight to get my teacher to believe me. I guess my teacher didn’t understand what power the promise of a good pizza had over a nerd like me.

Somehow I’ve lucked out and have an 8yo who thinks secretly reading under the covers past her bedtime is an act of rebellion, and it hasn’t yet occurred to her that her flashlights never seem to run out of batteries.

— Robert McNees (@mcnees) August 13, 2020

I had assumed that, much like my childhood innocence, the BOOK IT! program had died out in the early 00s due to a lack of interest. However, with a little searching, I was delighted to find out I was completely wrong. BOOK IT! is still alive, and Pizza Hut is still very much a vested partner in helping kids learn to love reading. They even have a wonderfully weird website filled to the brim with resources and tools to help parents and teachers get set up to track their kids’ progress.

In 2020, I read a total of three books start to finish, a paltry number by any means. Almost one month into 2021, and I’m already a third of the way there. Reading has become a great way for me to take my mind away from the stresses of work and the tumultuous world around me. It’s been a way for me to exercise my imagination and creative thinking and to give my eyes a much-needed break from the strain that comes with staring at a screen for 8, 10, 12 hours a day.

My brother sent me a photo to let me know that my nephew has read 7 out of the 10 books necessary for him to get his first personal pizza, and I can’t wait to see his face when it arrives. I want him so badly to experience staying up at night with a flashlight under the covers reading when he should be asleep. I want him to explore worlds fantastical and far away and explore what it means to be a kid learning about the world for the first time.

I suggest that for anyone who wants to rediscover the immense satisfaction that comes with reading, stimulate your environment. Turn off your phone, place your laptop far away, and find a quiet space where you can let your eyes focus on the words and let your mind relax and delve into the worlds before you. Start with an old favourite to jog your memory, or find a new one that sounds interesting but that you’ve been putting off because of that new binge-worthy show.

Books have the power to transform our thought, inspire imagination, evoke tears, induce laughter, and produce a deep sense of nostalgia, and there is no directly comparable feeling that comes with immersing yourself in a book and becoming attached to the story that it tells.

And once you’re done, get yourself some pizza as a reward.