Carrie Link

KNOCK KNOCK

"Knock knock", Wil says.
"Who's there?" I answer.
"Big Bird"
"Big Bird who?"
"To get to the other side!" he giggles.

I had the pleasure of spending an hour with four children with special needs recently. Our school was conducting standardized testing, and I was "monitoring" the lucky few that were exempt.

We were "productive" for the first 45 minutes, but after that, we were all ready for a good laugh.

"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"Banana"
"Banana who?"
"To give a gorilla!"

It's hard to take the the world and all its problems too seriously when you've got tears running down your face from laughter.

Where do we get our notion of "standard"? Are the kids upstairs all "typical", and therefore, able to produce neat and tidy results that make everyone feel better about the state of education these days? Where are the tests that measure depth of a soul, compassion and integrity? Maybe we had that covered down in the basement, sitting around telling and laughing at knock knock jokes.