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Not Smarter Than a Fourth-Grader

Not Smarter Than a Fourth-Grader

Last updated on: January 12, 2015 at 12:29 am by Aliza Worthington

Not Smarter Than a Fourth-Grader 2015-01-12T00:29:05-05:00 Aliza Worthington

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This morning on the way to school, my fourth-grader and I had the following conversation.

Him: Did you know sloths move so slowly that sometimes they mistake their arm for a branch, reach for it, and then fall to their deaths?

Me: Sloths have arms?

Him: Yeah! Of course they do.

Me: Sloths don’t have arms.

Him: (disbelievingly) Yes, Mom! They have REALLY LONG ARMS!

Me: No, they don’t.

Him: Yes, they do!

Me: They do not.

Him: (patiently) Mom. I’m talking about SLOTHS. S-L-O-T-H-S.

Me: I know what you’re talking about. Sloths. Sloths don’t have arms. Do they?

Him: (exasperated) YES! Sloths have arms!!! S-L-O-T-H-S!

Me: Stop SPELLING it. I KNOW what you’re talking about! Sloths have arms? I never knew that!

Him: (disbelievingly) HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW THAT???

Me: I really think they don’t. I’ll have to look it up when I get home. That’s really interesting.

*****

You see, that entire time HE was talking about sloths, he saw this animal in his mind.

“Bradypus” by Stefan Laube (Tauchgurke) – Own work (Stefan Laube)Originally uploaded at de.wikipedia.org: 2004-10-02 02:26 by Tauchgurke (658235 Byte) (Dreizehenfaultier (Bradypus infuscatus), Gatunsee, Republik Panama). Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bradypus.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Bradypus.jpg

The entire time I was talking about sloths, and insisting he didn’t need to SPELL it out for me, I was seeing this animal in my mind.

*****

Photographed by Guttorm Flatabø (user:dittaeva), from Wikimedia Commons, CC license

In my defense, they are both very slow-moving animals.

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