Not As Dumb As Some

Master13 took in the sentence in front of him which he had to fix.

Andy drank the rest of [Andy’s} coffee.

Being his first day of proper schooling in eighteen months, Master13 was keen to impress upon his teacher how undumb he was. He scribbled his answer.

“Let me see,” said a voice at his elbow. The face the words had come from frowned eagerly at Master13’s sheet of paper.

“Sure,” said my boy, especially pleased as nothing says you’re doing okay in a subject more than the other students asking you questions.

Neither of them would be feeling as smug if they’d realised Master13 had basically corrected the previous sentence to I’m is worried about Mary’s work.

“I’m not an idiot,” Master13 had assured me later that afternoon when I’d laughed at that effort. “I just forgot to cross the is out.”

Our five little munchkins are back at traditional schools this week after being outside the system as we traveled. The kids were excited and nervous while we were about as anxious as a white Russian in an AA meeting. Mainly because their homeschool teachers were a bit shit, but also because their days weren’t as structured on the road as they were about to experience.

I even suggested we start a book on which kid would result in a call from the office asking us to please come and get them as they’d a) fallen asleep in class, or b) refused to answer any questions without pre-negotiated time on electronics, or c) called the teacher a name like psycho weaner. Or worse, d) started singing Penis Colada – I really wish Tracey would stop teaching our guys bad habits.

“Which one?” Tracey scoffed at my suggestion. “Don’t you mean who’ll be first?”

But, much to our surprise, they all managed to get through the first day without us having to collect them early.

Although it was apparently a near thing for Miss6.

“How much longer do I have to stay here?” she’d spread her arms and asked her teacher in the lead up to lunch break.

Her teacher lied magnificently and said they were nearly finished. I’ll clue her up. With Miss6 you just say it’s another ten minutes. For some reason she accepts that regardless of whether it’s two or two hundred minutes to go. Actually, that’ll probably go some way to explaining why she struggles with telling the time too.

Rather wonderfully, all the kids had a grand time with their respective classmates and teachers and schools, and the next morning were just as keen to head off and do the same again.

Well, the same or better.

Like, Master13 was hoping today might be the day he managed to get an answer right in English.

“They wanted me to correct the second Andy’s to his,” he’d explained to us, “which I sort of did. But unfortunately I didn’t stop there and instead of saying Andy drank the rest of [his] coffee I went with, Andy drank the rest of [his Dad’s] coffee. How was I supposed to know Andy was allowed to have coffee? I’m not. I just figured he was flogging it off his father.”

We agreed to put it down to first day nerves.

“You’ll do better,” I said. “I’m sure you won’t be bottom of the class for long.”

“Oh, I’m not the dumbest,” he assured me with a grin.

Apparently, Master13 was upset about the mistakes as they left the classroom but his new friend had made him feel much better.

“You think you feel stupid,” the kid had said. “I was the idiot who was copying your work.”

Home and back to playing games.

Raising a family on little more than laughs

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