Summer Side Job

My Mom began sponsoring a summer reading program years ago. It was just for us kids and had a maximum payout of $50 each, but still. We were being paid. To read. Game on. In those early years of the program, I remember being a bit irked that my much-younger brother was filling up his "completed books" list with kids books. Since we were paid by the page, how was this fair? His pages had only a small fraction of the words my adult pages had. Word count would have perhaps been a more accurate payout method, but pages made more sense. Mostly because they were actually measurable.

This summer reading program, dubbed Penny-a-Page, has continued, such that we still participate every year, even as adults. We're each allowed to pick the 3-month summerish date range that our payouts will be based on, and from there it becomes a bit of a friendly competition. I think I'll go with July-September. I've got some plane rides in there that should help my page total. Did I mention game on? (To this date I have never won. So, there's that.)