15 June 2018

Riding Off With Perfect Attendance

The school year is ending for lots of kids.  Some of them will be rewarded for their academic, athletic, artistic and other achievements--or perfect attendance.

In my day, we got ribbons or medals--or "encouragement" from our teachers and parents. ("You're gonna do it again next year!")  A few kids I knew got material rewards like ice cream, a day at the movies or an amusement park, or even cash.  But 120 sixth-graders in Idaho will receive a prize many of us would have loved--a new bike.




Ryan Rogers, the owner of Rogers Toyota in Lewiston will be giving out the shiny new two-wheelers. The giveaway is part of a program called PASS, for Perfect Attendance Spells Success.  "We've been in business for 48 years," he explains, "and this is just one little thing we can do to give back to our schools and community."

I won't ask whether he sees the irony in an auto dealership giving away bicycles.  I'll just thank him for his generosity and wish he'd been in my neighborhood when I was in school!

2 comments:

  1. i had perfect attendance from 5th grade through high school (1st through 4th grades i was clobbered with all the childhood diseases except chickenpox, which i caught at the tender age of 30.) My reward each year was two pairs of White Sox tickets- in all those years i only got to one game (i am a Cubs fan.) i'd've loved a new bike!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mike--I always seemed to miss perfect attendance by two or three days. I think I got most of the childhood diseases before I started school, so when I was absent, it was because of a death in the family or some other situation.

    If they'd been offering free bikes for perfect attendance, however, I would've used my powers (from both genders) to keep emergencies from happening. Then again, I didn't know then that such powers were attendant to people like me! ;-)

    Happy Father's Day!

    ReplyDelete