Chats

Chats

“What are you doing?”

“Studying.”

“Why?”

“We have a test tomorrow.”

“We do?”

“No, I do.”

“Then why did you say we?”

“I meant me and everybody else in my class.”

“I’m not in your class?”

“No, Jeff, you’re in your class.”

“But we go to the same school.”

“Yes, but you are in kindergarten and I am in sixth grade,”

“Don’t kindergarten have tests?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t been in kindergarten for a while.”

“What is a test?”

“It’s when you learn something and then somebody asks you what you learned and you write down what you learned.”

“Oh, so I can’t write a lot of words yet so I guess no tests.”

“Well, there are other tests…”

“Like what?”

“Like Miss Gowen might ask who remembered to put their lunch trash in the wastebasket. Then the kids who did would pass the test and the kids who didn’t wouldn’t.”

“What if the kid who did pass the test, passed it to the kid who didn’t?”

“It doesn’t work that way. “

“What is a test?”

“It’s ah… it’s when you answer questions you are supposed to know the answers to. If you answer right you pass, if you answer wrong you don’t pass.”

“Where is the thing?”

“What thing?”

“The thing you pass?”

“Ah… You know what? We’re having cookies at lunch today! I saw Mom put them in our lunch boxes!”

“Cookies! Yippee! The brown ones or the yellow ones?”

“You’ll see when it’s lunch time!”

Jeff left the kitchen. “So, Alex,” said Mom, “That was quite the conversation you just had with Jeff!”

“How does it get so mixed up so fast?”

“He’s still learning.”

“How do you know what to say even?”

“It’s easy for me now, I learned it from you…”