People Read

There's this nifty little program at my local school, to encourage boys to read. They throw open the library early one morning and put on a pot of coffee, and invite boys to come on in and read with a grownup. The idea is that the boys will bring one of the men in their lives - their dad, their grandpa, an uncle, a big brother, or some incredibly cool guy who, despite a lack of blood ties, will cheerfully show up late for work or his morning basketball game at the Y because he took the time to read with his little buddy. It doesn't even have to be books! I can just picture some of the dads in my neighborhood cracking open a NY Times and walking their sons through the stock tables or sports section. "Hey, yesterday was the trade deadline, Connor - Let's take a look at what Isiah Thomas failed to achieve!"

It's a fine notion.

The only teensy tiny little catch was that the school decided to call it: Dads Read.

Now, I don't know about you, but I know a few kids who'd have a hard time coming out for something called Dad's Read. In most of those cases, it's for one simple, sad reason: Dad is gone. Each of their stories would make you weep - it's cancer, or a heart attack, or a car accident...

Or sometimes Dad didn't die, but he just moved on. He married someone new and started a new family and he's busy. Or maybe he never showed up in the first place.

As much as I wish every child in every school had a dad to read to them, wishing just won't make that happen. And it's all very well to say that any older guy can show up, it doesn't have to be a dad, but if the program is still called Dad's Read, well...

So people complained. And kept complaining. And eventually they changed the name.

You might think the new name would be something all encompassing and simple, like: Men Read. Me, I like the sound of that. I like the word: men. It covers the waterfront, as it were. Whether you're a tall skinny guy with a hip goatee, an aging ex-athlete with bad knees and middle-aged spread, or a creaky old gent with a cane, you're a man. And men read.

It's kind of a nice progression: boys read, they grow up, become men. And they read. Men read.

And they don't all become dads, but they do become men. And men read. Pilots and flight attendants and doctors and football players and musicians and nurses and gardiners and oh you get the picture.

But so many grownups seem uncomfortable with the words "men" and "women". It has to be "boys night out" or "getting together with the girls" or "ladies day" at the ski hill/golf club. In fact, when you look around, there's an almost frightening dearth of men and women.

Anyway. They renamed the literacy program "Reading with Male Mentors".

"Well that sounds groovy," you say. "I can sooo see myself bolting down my cereal and rushing for the door, yelling over my shoulder 'Move it, Male Mentor! Time to read!'."

Actually, I can kind of see that. Sadly.

I can also see myself designing and building a superBionicleLegoMegaBlox creation called MentorMan. He'd tire easily and have weak eyesight and maybe a nagging rotar cuff issue from the last time he tried to be "down with that". But his heart would be in the right place.

I suppose if "men" sounded too, uh, normal, they could have said Dudes. Dudes Read? Or maybe Guys - the word "guy" seems to have replaced "dude" in some circles. Guys Read? Or heroes - Heroes Read! That could work - except that women are heroes too. And this is supposed to be about the men. The men who read.

Hey, nothing against mentors, but isn't okay to grow up and just be, you know, a man or a woman?

And on that note, this woman is making tea.