“I don’t know how to write an editorial,” W told me when I arrive home from work one day this week. “And I need to write one for language arts.”

I was rushing around to get dinner started before I had to run out again to pick up J from theater practice. “Why don’t you Google it, look at a couple examples, and I can help you when I get back from picking up your sister?” I acknowledged his statement, though I didn’t completely register what he was saying.

When I returned, he tried again. “I have to write an editorial from the point of view of a character in our book, and it has to be ‘historically accurate.’ Can you help me?”

“What do you need help with?” I asked.

“I don’t know how to write one.”

“Didn’t your teacher go over it in class? She must have given you some examples,” I queried, hoping he would think back to the class and remember what he was supposed to do.

“Not really. She never told us how to do it.”

“I’ll bet she did, but you shut off,” I stated, probably more bluntly than I should have.

“What?” he asked, unsure of my meaning.

“You shut off,” I repeated. “Your teacher was talking about it, and you decided it was information you would never need. So you shut off.” A smirk of recognition crept across his face.

“She never talked about it. She gave us newspapers, but she never said we’d need to know it.” Imagine that!

I stifled a groan, and I hoped he couldn’t hear my eyes rolling….