Childhood Memories.

This is irrelevant as always, but did you all take part in the Book It program when you were a kid? The little purple buttons, and the free pan pizzas for reading books, and all that jazz? I get the strongest whiff of nostalgia just thinking about how excited I was by the ability to earn free personal pan pizzas...and how I would go up to the counter to get my free pepperoni pizza (as a 6 year old bowl-cutted kid), and how proud I was. (You know, back before the day before I would become horribly cynical about everything corporate and franchised and commodified. And thus become the wretch I am now.)
Anyhow, it appears that the anti-corporate forces have come out in sharp criticism of the program. I don't know if kids feel the same way about the program as I did, or whether this contributes to crass commercialism and obesity...but for some reason this makes me sad. Not because of the program itself, but just thinking back on Book It! and the complete and utter loss of innocence I feel about the whole thing. Back when stores were just stores, and restaurants were just restaurants, and there was no need to conceive of the Pizza Hut 2 blocks from my house as anything but The Pizza Hut. The place to go after soccer games, or for special treats, or the place where I'd earn my free pizza.

Or how McDonald's wasn't some evil "Fast-Food Nation" corporation, but the restaurant with food that my brother and I so desperately wanted as toddlers that we pestered my mother to such an extent that she begged the cashier to give us Happy Meals, and that she would send them a check as soon as she got home, because she didn't have the cash on her. (They did, by the way.) Or the place where we would excitedly go to for someone's birthday party. Or even the place where our elementary school would take us on field trips, and we would get free hamburgers. (that was, by the way, the first time I ever had a Hamburger, in the white wrapper. Before that, it was all cheeseburgers...in the yellow. I mean, seriously, why would you NOT want the cheese?) When graduating to a Quarter Pounder, or a Big Mac was some sort of benchmark for getting to be a big boy?

Has corporate and commercial culture changed so much that the commodification and sterility has actually gotten more apparent and has become apparent to everyone? Or did I just grow up and finally learn see what was always there, having just lost my innocence? Or did I just become some sort of awful high-brow snob that sees fast-food chains in a very different way than many other people, who still view these places much like I did...so that I'm now the elitist outsider?

I have to admit, I dislike all three possibilities.


Or does this have to do with the fact that my parents exposed us to a LOT of fast-food and microwave dinners as children?...and that having Asian parents never placed any filter on how we saw these restaurants and stores?