I apologize to the millions of my readers who know me only as a source of sweetness and light, who never gets angry and takes everything in stride. I know this post will come as an utter shock to you, but... thank God for email, because I would be jailed if some people said things to me in person, where I could slam their heads repeatedly into desks, pick up the classroom globes and thrust them over their heads, then push them down the stairs while they stagger around blindly with said globes upon their heads.

I got an email from UberElder's new teacher today.

The subtext in it was, "What's wrong with your kid?"

My daughter's brain doesn't function like the majority of kids' brains. I know this because I can see the ways she's remarkably like me, and I know what it was like when I was in school. What's worse for her, though, is that schools now move at a quicker pace and there is a greater emphasis on "procedures" and doing things a certain way. For example, if I got the right answer in math, it didn't matter if I got the right answer because I was picturing the candy aisle at Ben Franklin and thinking of my allowance and how many candy bars I could afford with said allowance -- the right answer was the right answer.

Now, you are prescribed a way to come up with the answer, and you must use that way whether it makes sense to you or not. But don't take too long -- because they've already moved onto another subject while you were trying to force your brain into THEIR pattern instead of the one that came naturally to you. HURRY UP! NOW IT'S TIME FOR LUNCH! Did you bring your lunch or did your mom pack one for you? You better get in the correct line, or you won't be eating today!

Now, Elder had the similar issues to overcome at her last school, but there are factors making it worse at this new school. One, it's huge and impersonal compared to the small and comfy one we came from, where if she was in the wrong place at the wrong time one of the moms volunteering would recognize her and say, "Elder, honey, recess is over." And there was no harm, no foul.

Another, there are certain subjects that grab Elder's attention and hold it like a vise. These are the subjects that her current school is like two years behind on, and she's bored out of her gourd. "Really?" she must be thinking, "Pick out the long vowel sound versus the short vowel sound? Did you know I knew how to spell 'pterodactyl' in first grade?"

Third, this school is located in a "planned community" where all the rich people from California who know everything except how to proceed at a four-way stop sign come to live. They have a version of PERFECT in their heads, and if you're different, well, you're flawed somehow.

But let me explain something to the people who think they know how people "should" be. Whether you believe in God or natural selection or BOTH God and natural selection like I do, "different" people exist for a reason. A beneficial reason that your puny little mind doesn't understand yet, if it ever will. How about you quit trying to "change" my "disordered" kid and let her learn her own way.