Today, I saw some guy leave his bike in the vestibule of the store. No lock (that I could see) or anything. I guess he didn't care about it that much.

It was the summer before high school. I was riding my bike (back in the days when I was light enough to do so) near my house. I just set it outside a corner store and went in to buy some snacks. When I came back out, my bike was gone.

Of course, I was upset. I'm not really sure if I had a lock and didn't carry it with me or if I didn't have one at all. A while later, I went home. My father, having found out about the theft, was upset. At the time, I figured it was because my bike had been stolen. Looking back, it was certainly because the money to pay for it had come out of his pocket and so it was that $200 was being pedaled away by some two-bit criminal.

Angry, he had me read one of the books that was on the reading list. However, I'm not sure if it was from the school I just graduated from or the school to which I was heading. The book was "Black Boy" by Richard Wright. Whether the book was pertinent to the situation at hand, or a way for him to blow off steam by having me out of his hair, I don't know.

I vaguely recall the details of the book and one of the aspects of this story that I can remember is that the book never came up again. Ever. Not in any of my high school or college classes.

Why do schools even assign reading lists if the subjects are rarely (if ever) touched upon?

tl;dr - Lock up your bikes and school reading lists are bullshit.