This Post Was Manufactured Using Child Labor

After dinner tonight, we were doing our usual routine: MD checking his fantasy sports standings, kids watching an age-inappropriate television show starring a semi-disgraced budding multimillionaire of middling talent, and me banging away on the laptop, ignoring my family.

But tonight, thanks to the fact that they repeat that stupid show about three thousand times per episode, even 50 inches of high-definitional splendor couldn't keep The Girl amused. So she came over and climbed into my lap, causing me to accidentally hit the delete key and lose about half of a post I was working on.

"Are you working on your blog again?" she asked. "And what is a blog anyway?"

I tried to explain to her that a blog was kind of like a diary: a place where you can write all of the private things you think in your head, but don't have the courage to tell other people unless either a) you're drunk and they're your bartender, or b) you post it in the most public arena possible, where it has the potential to shame your family and friends and maybe even get you fired.

She didn't quite grasp the nuances of my explanation, so she said, "That sounds neat. Can I have a blog too?"

Now, for a first grader, the kid's a pretty good writer, and she can be relentless when she gets interested in a project. I'm not a jealous person, especially of my own daughter, but with my luck if I let her have her own blog she'd be averaging a couple thousand hits a day AND have a book deal within the span of about two weeks.

So rather than compete, I decided the best thing for me to do would be to exploit her for my own selfish gain. I told her she could have a guest post on my blog. Besides, its about time the little freeloader started pulling her weight around here.

She brings her "sloppy copies" (what she calls her rough drafts) of her writing portfolio home on Fridays, so we had quite a bit of material to select from. She decided to share some of her thoughts on the what life is like in her first grade class. And so, without further ado, may I present The Girl's first guest post (with just a tiny bit of editorializing from her mother):

Heh heh...she wrote "Uranus". Now here's the weird thing. She SPELLS it correctly, but when she SAYS it, instead of "Your Anus" she pronounces it "urine-us." It reminds me of the whole Anita Hill debacle where all of the newscasters must have thought they sounded crass by saying "huh-RASS-ment" and fancied it up by saying "HARassment" instead. I never taught her to pronouce it that way, so I'm thinking it came from her teacher, who must have gotten fed up after twenty years of rude seven-year-old boys cracking up every time she gets to that part of the solar system.Mommy knows some compound words too, and accidentally taught them to your brother just the other day! The Boy's teachers were NOT pleased when he shared that particular vocabulary lesson with his little friends. Judging from a few of the emails I got that evening, neither were their parents.

All right, honey, I love you dearly, but... you left the owl alone, and touched a frigging giant hissing cockroach instead? I knew I shouldn't have had that glass of wine in my third trimester...

That's right, girlfriend. You rock those fact families. Learning IS fun, and even math is fun, no matter WHAT attempted brainwashing those antifeminist reactionaries over at Mattel will try with their vapidly programmed Teen Talk Barbies.

So that's it. I hope you enjoyed a look into Toquam School's Classroom #40. One of the best schools in this miserable district, and oh yeah, the one that the incompetent buttwipes in our Board of Ed are still trying to close.

We'll see if I invite her back for future guest appearances.