There are at least three times I will try to go our local Goodwill in Floyds Knobs. Once in the spring (your cleaning is my gleaning). Once in the fall (converting your college student’s room into your sewing area means all of those used books come in).

And once on or about December 30th or 31st, when that donation receipt becomes the end-of-year goal for many would-be charitable givers.

These are the three times I am most likely to find good used titles in the book section of the Goodwill. I find older picture books, slightly used MG and YA, and a host of college classroom titles.

But on Monday, while walking about the other areas of the store, hoping to find some interesting piece of metal or something bird-themed for Room 407, I came across something that stopped me in my tracks.

A nut tin.

Stay with me. I am given to distraction anyway. Most days it would take something far less imposing than a nut tin to stop me in my tracks. Ask the student who wears the shiny Uggs boots in Blue 4 how many times Mr. Hankins has stopped–mid-point–to look and to comment upon said boots.

This nut tin, a simple canister-type nut tin was the very same nut tin I might have sold as a student at Central Elementary School in Hastings, Michigan in 1981. And why couldn’t it have been? It looked the same. It felt the same. And the sticker on the bottom read “Assorted Nut Tin” and the address for school fundraising company in Ohio. Yes. This could have been one of the over one-hundred nut tins I sold that winter.

And I sense that was one for the way it made me feel holding it in my hands. A cream-colored finish with illustrations of meadow flowers in the center of each panel of the tin. Even the lid had a centered image of some flower. The finish of the tin, made not to feel like cold metal but rather something one might find pleasant against their fingers. The kind of tin you might feel long after the nuts were consumed if one were a tactile person.

I felt second place.

That year, I sold over one hundred nut tins to my family, friends of my family, teachers, and customers upon my Grand Rapid Press delivery route. Over one hundred. What might have inspired a boy of eleven to go out and sell this many nut tins?

The need for affirmation. The need for recognition. A chance to shine.

To be the top nut tin seller in the 5th grade.

I don’t remember what the prize was for being the top seller. But there was one.

I don’t remember if the school ever told us why we were raising funds. They probably didn’t.

I don’t remember the name of the girl whose father came in at the twelfth hour to make a decision to purchase nut tins for every employee of the large company he owned. But I remember the feeling of deflation. And it really matters not that I remember her name, but I have to wonder if she ever waxes “nut-staglic” about the day she came in first place for having sold more nine-dollar nut tins–with the help of her father–than the quiet boy who could only cut plain pumpkins and pine trees in art class and was not a part of the Christmas Pageant presentation that included every other students. The boy who sat in the hall for birthday parties.

I wonder now, has she ever wandered into a second-hand store to come upon a small nut tin. And did she think about a time in her life when all she wanted to do was to sell nuts?

I could only hope her tragic memoir has at least a chapter entitled “Daddy’s Little Bail-Out,” but I am able to quickly recognize when I am slipping into a toxic sort of thinking.

I don’t remember if the school acknowledged the super selling efforts of the 5th grade students in John Merrit’s class that winter. Who remembers second place?

But, I do remember that when the nut tins came in, I was able to see the enormity of what such effort had brought. There were cardboard cases full of these nut tins. This is what second place looks like, a virtual wall of nut tins. I could never get them all home even though I was a walker who lived just three blocks from the school.

My father had to come to the school, and we loaded case after case of mixed nut tins into the trunk and back seat of our red Chevy Citation. The nut tins were unloaded at home onto the front porch of our rental home at 518 West Bond Street. Mixed nut tins were sorted by our family to be distributed to the people who bought their nuts from the kid who came in second place.

And slowly, but surely, we got every one of those nut tins to their buyer. There were handshakes and “thank-yous.” There was my mother who kept one of those nut tins on the counter in our kitchen. What it held, I do not remember. But she had seen my disappointment in how the whole selling and fundraising went down, and I think she kept that nut tin on the counter because it was a part of me. And now, having paid her nine dollars into a losing campaign, it was a part of us.

Today, I wish I could remember what she kept in that nut tin.

I could have brought that nut tin home with me yesterday. Sticker-priced at fifty cents, it could only be made more valuable with the addition of some mixed nuts. But I couldn’t bring myself to want to own that nut tin. I couldn’t be absolutely sure it was the very same kind I sold back in 1981, but the associated feelings with that nut tin told me that there had been a value assigned to nuts some thirty-three years prior that I could not afford to return to today.

You see. . .since 1981, I have never wanted to sell nuts again. I didn’t think I would ever want to see another nut tin in my life after we had delivered the last of our over one hundred sold. I certainly wouldn’t buy one if a kid came to my door with them. And I hadn’t.

Until I did. One look at that nut tin and I became second place again. I became a victim again. I became a blamer again. I became a frightened, lonely, misunderstood seller of mixed nuts in decorative tins.

This is what numbers, contests, and prizes do to our readers, friends.

Because I didn’t know why I was selling nut tins in the first place, I became focused upon the prize associated with being the top-seller. To win the prize, I would sell nuts.

As Christmas break approached, I knew that being the top seller in my class would garner me a little fame that would be stripped away when I returned from Christmas break with no “scary ghost stories and tales of the glory.” To be recognized by my peers, I would sell nuts.

I wasn’t very good at math. I was a fair reader from having been trained up in Watchtower Society publications. I was a close reader before close reading was in vogue. But my Tough Skin jeans and thrift store sneakers were often over-looked by my teachers who seemed to favor kids who looked like they had just walked out of the JC Penney Winter Catalog. If I could get John Merritt to pat me on the head and to tell me I had done a good thing by having sold more nuts that any other student at Central Elementary school, I would sell nuts.

And I sold nuts. And I got beat out by someone who sold more nuts than I had sold. There would be no future in selling nuts for me though–at times–I felt that I had made a pretty good run back in 1981.

I wish you could have seen me that year. Red satin jacket with red and white piping around the waist, collar, and cuffs. See it? And the Detroit Tigers plastic helmet I would wear while delivering papers. You know the kind? With the brown plastic “webbing” inside and the adjustable snap closure on the back? And my transistor radio with the headphones I would wear while delivering papers listening to Joe Jackson, Huey Lewis and the News, and Rick Springfield.

Oh, I was a guy from whom you would buy a nine dollar nut tin.

And our readers in the room. . .they will read the books we introduce them to. They will read what we bless. When we think enough of a young reader to share a title of interest do we know that this is just the type of affirmation I was looking for back then? It has not changed for kids. Sure, their plastic hats have probably became knit caps popular with skateboarders. Their jackets are more than likely hoodies from some popular teen store. And their music player is probably embedded with some kind of app that could have a nut tin on your doorstep within twenty-four hours depending upon your proximity to the distribution center.

Someone invited me to sell nuts. But I didn’t know why I was selling nuts. And in the end what I got was a whole lot of nuts.

But no true appreciation for nuts. Or for contributing to the larger community of nut sellers of which I was a part.

In fact, the only affirmation I received of my nut-selling was from my Playboy-hoarding, AC-DC listening, pre-hormonal buddy, Brad Slocum, who looked at my wall of tins and said, “Wow. Look at your nuts.”

I put that nut tin back on the shelf.

It was making me feel a little. . .squirrel-y.

This is just one of the things I am thinking about as we get ready to return to school next week. I have an opportunity to expand my work a little bit in 2014 in the area of reading of which I am very, very excited. I know what I am doing, who I am doing it for, and why I am doing it. I am doing it so that I might reach ONE would-be reader out there.

ONE.

I hope that this is not one more than any of my friends out there. I’m not out to win this time.

Unless I can win one for books. One for reading.

At one time, I knew nuts. Now, I like to think I know reading.

It doesn’t come in a tin or any kind of packaging.

It does, however, recognize that whatever the cost of any book we put out there for our readers, it’s what’s inside of that book that brings a mixed bag of comedy, adventure, hope, love, tragedy, fantasy, wonder. . .words and ideas.

This is certainly something we could pitch. . .right? Let’s think about numbers, contests, and prizes.

When we ask our students to read. . .what are we selling?