Silver, White Winters that Melt into...Frost?

Showers are often therapeutic and relaxing. Also, during the winter, they're much warmer than the air outside the bathroom, so you don't want to get out as soon you've finished. But standing under the water doing nothing is boring. What do you do?

Simple. Pick up a bottle of shampoo and start reading the back. Not only do you learn all sorts of fantastic, sesquapedalian terms, such as dimethicone, ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate, butylphenyl methylpropional, citrus medica limonum peel extract, and oh, my personal favorite, guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride, but you also learn how to apply this "fortifying shampoo with active fruit concentrate" in four different languages. Now you can get out of the shower feeling good about the time you spent there. You can also feel good about your hair care products because your shampoo actually ayuda a mantener un color duradero y brillo deslumbrante en el cabello teñido (As Chris Farley might put it, for those of you who don't habla Español, that's Spanish for..."helps provide lasting color and brilliant shine to color-treated hair." Not that your hair is color-treated; of course it isn't. "I simply relate what was told to me by the Chinese [shampoo bottle]" [the allusion is, of course, to Eugene Field's The Duel]).

You know, people often read when they're bored. Unfortunately, they're often bored by reading. Not to mention, they are bored still further by reading which is assigned. Gasp. If they must concentrate on "one story and one story only" (from Robert Graves' "To Juan at the Winter Solstice"), they often become frustrated, enraged, and even depressed. The result: they put Steinbeck down, pick up Rowling, and Monday's report remains unwritten, another perspective unexplained and, worse still, unformed. What a waste. Another unnecessary tragedy facilitated by assignments.

But what else can we do? If we allow the children to choose what they read, they will automatically gravitate toward the easiest and most exciting books, while the most important classics will go on as they are used to, uncracked and covered with sedentary particles of dusty decades? What else can we do but assign the children to read?

Well, first of all, take the Harvard Classics, all 52 volumes, and put them on the bottom shelf where Harry Potter used to be, and move him to the next shelf up. We should not be interested in creating a visual hierarchy of literature so much as forming an accessible library.

Second, let the children choose what they read, for the most part anyway. Reading something is better than reading nothing, which will most certainly happen if the children learn nothing in school except to hate literature in general. Anything which tampers with and infringes upon the right of the children to read what they wish will be automatically met with rebellion and dislike, so we ought to avoid that inasmuch as we are able.

Third, parents ought to be an example to their stewardships and read the things they wish their children to read. Often, that will cut in TV watching time and other things, but children whose parents read will be more prone to reading themselves.

Fourth, just because a book is considered a classic does not make it old and boring, and children ought to understand that. Good literature remains forever fresh and transcendent of other factors, like "peace [which] comes dropping... / from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings" (from W.B. Yeats "The Lake Isle of Innisfree").

Fifth and finally, what is needed is more exposure. Period. If people are willing to read shampoo bottles and cereal boxes and billboards and road signs, why shouldn't we post literature in those places too, in addition to the lists of meaningless ingredients, mindless mazes and pathetic puzzles, and advertisments for laser hair removal?

Just imagine it: a little boy reads an excerpt from Henry V on the back of his mom's headrest in the car as they head to soccer practice; a teenage girl scans a passage from Shelley on her hairspray bottle; a pair of rambunctious twins suddenly quiet down in the back seat because they noticed a quotation from Confucius on a Macdonald's billboard near the mall; an entire family swarms to breakfast because they want the handy-dandy package of literary trading cards at the bottom of the cereal box.

"You got a Tolkien? No fair! I've been looking for that one forever!"

"Well, I've got it now."

"But I need it to complete my fantasy and science fiction series. I found an Arthur C. Clarke in the Cheerios yesterday and now I just need Tolkien."

"Too bad, I'm keeping it."

"Look, I'll trade you for it."

"What do you want to give me?"

"Um, like, what do you say I give you two Dickens and one Verne for Tolkien?"

"Throw in that Robert Frost rookie card, and you've got a deal. Then my American poets collection is all done; well, all except for Ginsberg and Plath. Bobby Harris in my math class has duplicates of them, but he won't trade unless I give up a Steinbeck All-Star card, and my H.G. Wells in mint condition."

"Well, how about just Frost for Tolkien? Straight up?"

"Done."

So, thus we see a potential cure for--at least a combatant against--illiteracy and anti-homework sentiment: Byron on boxes, and Marlowe on milk jugs; bright copper Carrolls and warm woolen Miltons; brown paper packages tied up with Twain; these are...well, you get the point.