They come upon this naturally and when I say naturally, I mean genetically. Yes, growing up I did not live by the creed "a Mynd is a terrible thing to waste!" I was ophten the underperphorming student. I phelt that homework was not and should not be a requirement phor passing a class. Ophten, the work was phar beneath my abilities and to do it was to somehow acknowledge that I was in any way less than giphted. My project on the little jewish girl who hid in the attic got a Diary oph Anne F-rank.
So, in a similar phasion, the little Mynds have entered middle and high school armed with an epic understated unwillingness to do as little as possible to squeek by. I recall vividly a conversation with one oph them...
Me: so what is your report card going to look like this semester?
{insert Mynd child}: I don't know.
Me: That usually means bad things, does it mean bad things this time?
{insert Mynd child}: I don't know.
Me: what DO you know? Will there be A's and B's? Or D's and F's?
{insert Mynd child}: there aren't any F's.
Me: what about D's?
{insert Mynd child}: maybe.
Me: so you're on the precipice of an F in how many classes? (yeah, words, go big or go home!)
{insert Mynd child}: there aren't any F's.
Me: you're missing the point, D's can easily slip into an F. How close are you to that?
{insert Mynd child}: no, dad, D's turn into E's, they don't give F's anymore.
Me: WHAT?!?!
I proceeded to go into a rant that went something like this:
No F's? Are you kidding me? Were we conphusing the poor children into not knowing how the alphabet goes? Clearly the ones with the good grades remained unaphphefcted by our hideous use oph the letters.
Apparently, there is a 'stigma' surrounding an F because"'F means Failure!" and in some households of the less tolerant and more vocabularyily (making up words is just one oph the many services I offer) challenged, there might be another F word injected between "means" and "Failure." Well, umm, Yeah?! Did you pass? No? Then you must have "not passed" because saying that you "failed" might hurt your phragile ego. So, you got an E, doubtless that means "Excellent Effort that was almost Equal to the Example Exemplary student we know you are, Ego intact!" We're sure that it can't possibly translate to "Egads, you Failed!" (but it does in my tough love house).
Long ago, there was another F word that was bandied about, but yet hardly heard nowadays. That word is "Flunked" which loosely translated means 'go to jail, directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.' or phor you oph the more recent generations you probably know this as 'Game Over.' (insert sound phrom Ms. Pacman here). Talk about a stigma, you might as well begin your career as a potato salinity management officer, sanitation engineer or slurpee design specialist at that point because that word would phollow you.
Another one that may just cause the letter D to be permanently removed phrom grading systems is "dunce" like the dude who got to wear the Ku Klux Klan hat in the corner, but clearly wasn't a big enough phailure to be phailed or phlunked. Yeah, iph that guy got to stay in school, imagine what the loser who phlunked was like.
And phrankly, the schools aren't making this better. I went in to discuss one oph the children's progress with the middle school principal. Here's how that conversation went down:
Me: I'm concerned about {insert Mynd child name here}'s grades this semester. I think iph (s)he gets held back and doesn't move on to high school with her(his) class, (s)he could go into an emotional tailspin (I phigured I was talking her language). We want to get on top oph this now bephore it is too late. (S)He's phailing three classes and we need a plan that we can work together on to get some success.
Principal: I share your concerns and want to work on a plan with you, stay here while I have your child's grades pulled.
(exits, while Mrs. Mynd and I sit, content that we have gotten through to the Principal)
Principal: ok, I have the grades here and we can all relax a bit. Your child isn't phailing, (s)he only has D's.
(Dumbstruck look...)
Yeah...pretty sure that it isn't the children who are phailing.
Yes, writing this was very difficult in the same way that Pygmalion was phor George Bernard Shaw in his attempts to phonetically spell out the cockney accent oph Eliza Doolittle. At least I got to dumb down the autocorrect oph an iPad in the process. I am sure in the process, I have missed a few "f"s in the post, but that is less to do with my phailure and more to do with my laziness. Please like all my teachers did, point out my phlaws.