A New Way to Climb the Anthill

On the way out of school one afternoon last week, I asked Alex how his day went. "Well, I got to the second anthill." I asked what had happened. "Oh, well, is today the day we go to art class?" Yes, it is. "Oh...I just pulled two ants for talking." Hmm, that doesn't sound suspicious at all. I'm really grateful that the boy doesn't lie well AT ALL.

My suspicions might have died there but when I was going through his homework folder I found a note. Now, I have an extensive collection of notes from this kid's teachers, camp counselors and other various supervisors (and, yes, I'm keeping them for posterity's sake), but this was the first one of its kind.

"Alex reached the second anthill today. The first one was for talking but the second one was for calling the art teacher by her first name." At this point the boy came be-bopping through the kitchen. "Hey, Alex, what's Ms. Pernell's first name?" The look of shock and dismay on his face was priceless. He turned a little gray and stammered, "How...how did you know?" I told him that I was a mom and I KNOW EVERYTHING. (I'm trying to keep that little fallacy alive at least through the first grade.) We then discussed how we not only do not address adults by their first name, we also don't call them dude or bro, and we most definitely do not fib to our mom about how we climbed the anthill.

As to how he knew the teacher's name, he cleared that up for me. She has a monogrammed lunch bag which he saw, and read, as he is now reading everything. He reads signs along the highway, TV commercials, newspapers, etc. In fact while he and Art were out and about the other day he was reading signs for him. Alex told Art "There's one sign that Mom doesn't like me to read." Art said, "Really? Which one?" Alex replied, "Well, I won't say it, but it's spelled H-O-O-T-E-R-S." I'm surprised Art didn't drive off the road. Art told him that it was a restaurant where the girls didn't wear very many clothes. Alex wolf-whistled from the backseat. I'm so glad I wasn't with them.