"No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind." *

Start with a very teeny tiny space (fetchingly decorated as an igloo with milk jugs, Christmas lights, and blue plastic tablecloths), a janitor obsessive about scratched floors, and a school building with heating temps regularly reaching into the nineties, making the school like unto the Sahara Desert.

Add some well-meaning if fairly clueless parent volunteers (many of us toting students’ younger siblings) and some already-overworked teachers, lots of little kids who don’t really grasp the concept of money OR tax OR waiting their turn, and a few older kids who are just learning how to work the system, or maneuver around it.

Top with a large-hearted and kind anonymous donor who generously donated money but with no plan regarding how to allocate it to needy kids, and what have you got?

THE SCHOLASTIC BOOK FAIR FROM HELL.

I haven’t been this exhausted since I gave birth to Primo.

I have a really good idea – let’s forget the waterboarding debacl – ahem – debate – and conscript Guantanamo prisoners into running grade-school Scholastic book fairs nationwide. Yes, it might violate the Geneva Conventions, and it might be tough getting clearances for all of them, but I say it’s adequate...duress...at least enough to get them to confess something and send ‘em all the hell back home, where for fear of having to do it again, they will behave themselves from now on.

It’s just a thought.

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* Article 17, Third Geneva Convention