Last year, when my daughter was in Kindergarten, I had the opportunity to volunteer in her classroom and listen as all the kids practiced their reading. At first, only a few of them could manage to sound out the most basic words, but as the school year went on I witnessed an astonishing transformation. Watching those kids practically burst with pride the first time they made it through a page without any help, hearing their excitement as they realized a whole new world had just opened up for them, was incredible.

One issue I noticed that came up week after week, child after child over the course of the year was that they would confuse lowercase ‘b’s with ‘d’s. To be clear, the kids were all very familiar with the capital letters of the alphabet, but since the lowercase ‘b’ and ‘d’ are mirror images of one another, the kids would come to one while reading and not know which one they were looking at. Most of them would guess. A few would look up, scanning the classroom for the one of many signs that showed lower case letters beside their capital counterparts, as in “Bb.”

I was able to solve this quickly with my own daughter at home, by painting capital versions of those letters on her right and left thumbnails, respectively. That way, when she saw a lowercase ‘b’ in a book, she could hold her thumbs on either side of it and see which familiar, capital letter the “bubble” of the mysterious new character was pointing toward. But I figured painting all of her classmates’ nails on my visits to the school would be frowned upon.

After awhile, I noticed that distinguishing between ‘p’s and ‘q’s was also an issue for a lot of the kids, even the few who had sailed through the ‘b’ and ‘d’ conundrum without much trouble. I wondered if I could make stickers to put on their little hands: Either a capital ‘D’ and a ‘Q’ on the left side (capital for easy identification, and left hand because their lowercase counterparts point leftward) and/or an ‘B’ and a ‘P’ on the right. They wouldn’t even need to have both stickers, because they know a ‘p’ is either a P or a Q. The ‘Q’ on their left hand, and the fact the bubble of the ‘p’ is pointing away from it , fills that last tiny gap in their understanding and lets them know the letter must be a ‘P.’ Of course, that’s when I realized ‘DQ’ stickers would already exist, and I headed to Dairy Queen.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have any stickers with the capital ‘DQ’ logo available that day. They did have plenty of ice cream, so the trip wasn’t a total waste. An online search that evening revealed that Dairy Queen actually made plastic rings at some point in the past. These days they’re considered vintage and available on Ebay for around $15 apiece. Rings might work even better than stickers, if they could be purchased in bulk and at a reasonable price.

So here’s my proposal: Dairy Queen should mass produce ‘DQ’ rings to distribute to local schools, or at least keep a large supply of their little round logo stickers on hand (no pun intended) in case parents or teachers want to try using them this way. The complete euphoria a child experiences when they finally read a story all by themselves is rivaled only by the thrill of eating ice cream (and the wonder of Christmas morning). Dairy Queen is in a unique position to offer kids a shortcut to that joyful feeling, which may foster a lifelong love of reading. I hope they’ll see this post and decide to “treat kids right” this fall, by helping them ring in the new school year with whimsy and confidence.