I aged out of the program at 12, and we kept milking those BOOK IT! slips for years thanks to my baby-faced little sister. But, once she hit the threshold five years later, the jig was up. By then, I was 17, and those itty-bitty little pizzas weren't doing much for me anymore. I'd graduated to making my own pizza bagels or driving over to Philly with my friends for a monster slice from Lorenzo & Sons on South Street. I still mourned. It wasn't so much the loss of our Pizza Hut bounty that stung as the knowledge that I was growing up and those golden hours — uncomplicated, innocent, and good — with my grandma weren't coming back. It was the end of an era, and my empire had crumbled into oregano-flecked dust.