I’m a gymnastics coach, and sometimes I like to be melodramatic to make my students laugh. Some of them like to match my energy.

I had the following interaction with a nine-year-old girl:

Me: “Hey, you got a problem?”

Girl: *Looks me up and down, then crosses her arms.* “Yeah, I got a problem.”

Me: “Well, I got a problem, and it’s four feet tall and wearing a pink leotard.”

Girl: *Without taking so much as one nanosecond to think about it.* “Well, at least your problem’s pretty.”

In the 1970s, when I was very young (I’m thinking eight years old), my school arranged for everyone in my grade to attend swimming lessons at the local pool once a week. I wasn’t a particularly good swimmer, but I listened carefully to the instructor, did my best, and had fun.

The lessons came to an end, and the instructor informed us that we’d all passed and could therefore take the more advanced class next time. We were all proud and happy (plus we got cloth badges we could show off to our friends and families, which was kind of cool).

As I was about to leave the pool area to shower and get changed, the instructor called my name. I turned, smiling, thinking she was going to say something nice like “Good luck in the next class.”

Instead, she leaned down and said:

Instructor: “You were the worst swimmer of the bunch. I was going to fail you, but I changed my mind, because I wanted to have a full class of passing students.”

I could feel my face fall. She nodded at me, evidently satisfied, and went back to what she’d been doing.

I don’t know why she told me that. If her goal was “crush a little kid’s spirit and make her cry”, mission accomplished.

My cousin has been renting a room from us while he studies at the university in our city. Aside from initial teething troubles, it’s gone okay. Really, the most inconvenient part is that my son, who is five, has decided he’s the coolest Big Kid ever and leaves me ragged trying to keep him out of [Cousin]’s room while he’s studying.

This week, I got an email from my son’s kindergarten teacher, asking for my husband and me to come in to speak with her.

Apparently, my son and some other boys have started playing sword fights with sticks on the playground. She hadn’t been quite sure where they got the idea, but their teacher has been tearing their hair out trying to impose on them the rule that You Do Not Hit Each Other With Sticks, Ever, No Exceptions.

And she was quite put out that, for show and tell, my son had brought in his cousin’s kendo stick, which he plays as a sport at his university. And proceeded to tell everyone about how sometimes on weekends, he’s allowed to go to the kendo club with his cousin and hit everyone with sticks.

The origin of Stick Fight Club, and why all the kids wear their bike helmets to play this game, has been solved.

I am teaching a class of ten-to-eleven-year-old children. We are doing an art activity, and I am letting them pick which medium they want to use for their art piece. One of the students is on the autism spectrum, and he doesn’t always understand non-literal interpretations of phrases.

He is going through the charcoal pencils, which are graded in terms of softness.

Student: “[My Name, My Name!] I got hard!”

Me: *Glaring at the students who have started giggling.* “I’m glad you found the pencil you wanted. Now let’s talk about how you might want to rephrase that in the future…”

My two-and-a-half-year-old son has moved to a new group at the daycare. I’m picking him up for the first time at this new group.

Teacher: “He’s had a great first day! But I was wondering: can he read already?”

Me: “Um, no, unless he’s keeping it a secret from me. Why?”

Teacher: “Well, this morning he picked up a book and started reading out loud to the rest of the kids.”

Me: ‘What book?”

Teacher: “[Book].”

Me: “Oh, we have that one at home as well. He knows it by heart indeed. He picks that one at home all the time too.”

Teacher: “Well, yes, but then I gave him [Different Book], and he read that one out loud as well.”

Me: “Yes, we have that one at home too.”