Am I Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Hey, sweetie. How was school today?

Pretty good. Guess what, mom? I'm doing a project on wetlands!

Hey, cool, I love wetlands - what's your topic?

I got the letter E so I was

What do you mean you got the letter E?

The teacher assigned each person a letter of the alphabet and their wetland project has to be about something that starts with that letter. So I was going

Who's the poor sucker who got stuck with Z?

No one, there's only 25 kids in the class.

Well that's a relief.

So but I was going to

What about Q? Or U or V? Those would suck too.

I know Owen got V, I don't know what he's going to do, but I was going to do

Hey, how about Eleocharis?

...what?

What?

What did you say?

Uh, Eleocharis, cool Genus, in all sorts of wetlands, awesome right?

*blank*

Er, were you going to say something?

I was going to do the Elizabeth Hall Wetlands.

Oh. Huh. Wow. That's a good idea. How did you think of that?

I remembered Grandpa likes to go there to look at birds sometimes.

Huh. Well, that's a really good idea. Forget I said anything.

What did you say? Was it real words?

Yeah, it's real, it's a type of wetland plant.

Oh. I thought maybe you had some wine before I got home from school or something. (*makes drinky-drinky motion with hand*) I'm planning to do a presentation. Can I use the computer tonight?

*reeling from implications of ten-year-old child making drinky-drinky motion at me* Uh, yeah, sure. I can show you how to use PowerPoint, it's this program where you can make really nice slide presentations...

I already know how to make PowerPoints, mom. I do them all the time.

*reeling from implications of ten-year-old child being more technologically advanced than myself* Oh. Right. So do you, like, need a snack or something?

*laughs, waves sandwich in my direction* Mom, I was standing here making a sandwich the whole time we were talking! Do you want me to make one for you too?

*reeling from being in the frigging Twilight Zone* Uh, no thanks. I think I'll just lie down for a minute. I feel a little dizzy all of a sudden.