TD Bank is offering kids (18 or younger) $10 for reading 10 books this summer.
Great, right? Here’s the deal:
1. Read 10 books this summer. See suggestions.
2. Print out the Summer Reading Form
3. Write down the names of the books they’ve read
4. Take the form to the nearest TD Bank
5. Watch $10 be deposited into a new or existing Young Saver Account
Oh, wait. Notsogreat.
1. Locate the nearest TD Bank location (WTF?!? I thought TD Bank specialized in online banking!):
“There is no listing found based on your criteria. Please change your criteria and try again.” (IOW, “Move to a location where we have a physical presence, sucker!”)
2. Move there.
3. “Here’s your money kid, only… we’ll keep it for you. Howzat for a sweet deal, eh?”
4. 10 books? *feh* Sub-par. Way, way sub-par. (Of course, “par” to me is the last Summer Reading Program I participated in as a kid. My total? 235 books for the summer. Yeh, yeh, Mom did shoo me outa the house, and visits to grandparents involved lotsa outdoorsy stuff, too. IOW, wasn’t 24X7 w/my nose in a book. I used to read a lot more than I do even now.)
Of course, if parents would simply stop playing “event planners” for their kids entertainment schedules and just, well, parent while letting doing whatever they can to compel their mentally lazy kids to create their own entertainment, then encouraging them to read, making sure they can get to a library, etc., could go a long way toward improving our future citizens.
Just sayin’.
Used to love summer reading programs. Didn’t get paid a dime for any of them. But I think some of them had incentives like construction paper feathers to put on drawings of birds or something like that. Paper ribbons, etc.