It all happened because a friend (I use the term loosely) nominated me for the school's Enthusiastic Reader Award. I, of course, accepted, and proceeded to read the literature. Every school in the entire state of New Jersey would nominate one student to win at the state level. Of these, there would be one winner at each level for each section of the state, for a total of nine. Winners would go to Monmouth College, read books to little kids, meet an author, and take a promotional photo . . . with the sponsor's spokesperson. That this spokesperson was Ronald McDonald sent a chill down my spine as I read. Then I told myself not to be silly, that I lived in the most populated section of the ninth most populated state in the union, that the odds against my winning were more than good.
I told as few people as possible why I went to Monmouth College that day--it's my best kept secret ever. Other than my family (and they didn't all know), the only people who knew were the school librarian, the principal, and two of my friends. People asked me why I wasn't in school that day, and I was wonderfully evasive without actually lying. What could I have told them? That I read The Giving Tree to a group of first-graders, and was then punished by being subjected to an interminable discussion of Is Your Mama a Llama? That I had to kneel on the floor beside Ronald McDonald and seven other winners for photos? (I say only seven others because the sole male winner ran out of that hall with his award like he was racing with the devil. I swear there were skid marks. The girls stuck it out. Which gender would you say is stronger?)
At the end of the day, the winners were informed that the photograph would be used on a poster, to be distributed to every library in the state. I'm still amazed I didn't fall into catatonia then and there. The days passed, and soon, mid-July, a tube was delivered to my house. Inside were the posters, with a note saying to "please feel free to send information to your local newspapers." I had a good laugh on that one, especially combined with my relief that I wouldn't be posted in the library.
I coasted on that high for months, and really enjoyed the opening of my junior year in high school. Then those blasted people sent me another letter--this time opening with the inauspicious words, "Some wonderful news!" I had had just about enough of their wonderful news, but figured there really wasn't anything worse than Mama Llama that could happen to me. Oh, how wrong I was! The letter told me of their evil plan to put the picture of the Enthusiastic Readers on a McDonald's trayliner. A TRAYLINER. It was a nightmare. My face, with Ronald McDonald and a book, beneath everybody's hash browns.
One day in March, about a year after this whole nightmare began, my lab partner ran into physics yelling "ADAIR! Check it out!" and waving a trayliner. After a short, panicked scream, I had my first public weeping fit since second grade. It was so horrible, and so funny. He had meant well, but I was completely undone. My entire physics class, and whoever else he had told, then knew.
But the Enthusiastic Reader Award taught me a lot; I now know that llamas are poor literary subjects, that Murphy was right about things that can go wrong, and that guidance counselors have long memories (mine still teases me about my "McAward"). Oh, yeah, I also learned that hell hath no fury like reading mavens with a corporate sponsor.
