My 12 year old son came home with a monumental packet of papers on Ancient Civilizations tonight. There were 10 pages of notes fastened to the back of it. In total, he handed me 48 pages on Aztecs, Mississippians, Mayans and Incas, then exclaimed, “This is ALL on the test tomorrow!”

Tomorrow.

After I finished work and made dinner, I borrowed some blank notecards from my daughter and got to work listing the key facts, dates, and giving him anagrams to remember information.

“The Incas were from PEACH, but it’s a B instead of an H. Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile and Boliva. Or, it could be BEACH, with a P instead of the H. Either way, there’s an EACH in there, but the H is really a P or a B. Got it?”

I won’t tell you what I did with the Mayans BEGHM. Okay, it was BEGAN, but the A is really an H and the N is really an M. I WAS HELPING HIM THE ONLY WAY I KNEW HOW, PEOPLE.

After nearly two hours of this desperation and certainty of his failure, a few minutes ago he looked at me and said, “Mom, there is one good thing about this test.”

“Really? What could be good about needing to know all this information by tomorrow?”

With no idea of the palpitations I had been having for the last 120 minutes he took a matter-of-fact tone and said, “Well, I’m allowed to look at my notes.”

Follow

Email