Exhibit 27.11

They Must Be Stopped

Yesterday I observed a 3rd grade classroom and came to this realization: 3rd graders terrify me. They're too smart and open and they're coming for us all. At every question they'd raise their hands, even when they didn't have an answer (especially when they didn't have an answer for some of them). Many had aluminum water bottles on their desks that they'd brought from home. Even I can't do this. My coffee travel mug--already a less healthy container--spends days in my car before I remember to bring it in. When asked to write poems, they couldn't help but be surrealists. One kid started listing off the Greek gods he knew while he scribbled sentences about the ocean. It was picture day, so they all looked like tiny lawyers. The Scholastic book orders I saw fulfilled were all about werewolves and war and o god they're short enough to hide below our knees.

Their dependence on the pencil sharpener is the only thing that might do them in.

And I contrast this to what I remember about the 3rd grade and can't help but think of all the ridiculous things I must spoken about seriously and how shocking it is that nobody took the time to kick me. The only Greek gods I knew had given their names to cars. The only thing I drank was all the cola. On picture day, I only parted my bowl cut more precisely down the center of my head.

Already I'm pretending that things being worse was better because while there were bowl cuts, there were not these precocious mysteries. But if you asked if this fear is how nostalgia begins, I wouldn't raise my hand to give you an answer.