his preamble to the tribute to his mom that I saw was super moving.

That was really lovely.

I hadn't heard from her since I offered to meet last week. So all she needed to say is: "thank you for your willingness to meet with me, can we have lunch or meet next week? Tuesday or Thursday would be best."

That's it.

If someone does not confirm you are meeting, IME, no meeting is set.

Yes, because otherwise you would've been dating all the ladies and getting into trouble, right? If only you'd been a year older. Sigh...;)

Well, I wouldn't have been getting the ladies I dated into trouble, true, unlike one of my closer friends back then. (I have hidden under a bed in a girl's hotel room to avoid being seen by a class trip chaperone, for the record.) And senior year some of the friends I hung out with had a Mystery Date style adventure that included a car chase and having a gun pulled on them, but because I was younger they were going to be out past my curfew and I didn't tag along.

Right? Why is she bringing it up to apologize for something you never even knew she was flaking on?

Timelies all!

Being a spring baby, there was never the issue of being the youngest in the class. It was suggested that since I already knew how to read coming into kindergarden, that I should be skipped to first grade. Thankfully my parents didn't think that was a good idea. (I had enough social/peer problems as it was.)

It's possible that I could flake out enough to schedule a meeting and not let the other person know. If I did, however, I would never mention it.

Of course! That's 100% the flaw, not the flaking -- the talking about it like it was real!

I never went to kindergarten. What's it for? (serious question, I've always wondered what was the difference between K and 1st.)

Maybe Kindergarten is for socialization.

A friend of mine's nephew and his wife just named their son "Ebenezer".

Is that a name making a comeback?

Well, 35 years ago, a lot of 5 year olds had never been to any kind of school at all. K was half-day, and really focused on getting kids used to the routines of school and interacting with their peers and sitting still, with the academic content of stuff like letters and numbers and the alphabet. (Edited to note, for those who were worrying, that I do realize that letters = the alphabet.)

Now, it really varies by the school and the affluence of the neighborhood. K at our Title 1 (high-poverty) school in Georgia, there were still a lot of kids who had never been to school before, although K is full day there (which is very common now). Academic content was numbers to 100, letters and their sounds, reading was not expected yet. At the affluent public school where Dillo attended K, the kids were expected to be reading (or close to it) and adding and subtracting numbers up to 10 by about March. In a lot of suburban schools, people say the current K curriculum is basically what the 1st grade curriculum was 30+ years ago. And the argument is that many 5 year olds are simply not developmentally ready for that content.

In NYC public schools, kids have to read at a level F in order to "fly" to 1st grade. Dylan's current school (which is a Title 1 school) also pushes very hard on writing, and they do basic math - numbers up to 100, counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, reading clocks and counting money, addition and subtraction.