The way you get your child into the gifted class is, you go to the school personally and make it clear to the staff that you are a Concerned Parent, meaning a potentially humongous pain in the ass. You should demand to see the curriculum, so as to make sure that, at each grade level, your child will receive instruction in the subjects appropriate for a standard American education, namely:

GRADE SUBJECTS LEARNED

K-2 Not to cross the street; not to take drugs; not to get in strange cars; not to talk to people; not to trust anybody; the Pledge of Allegiance

3-7 How to make science fair projects proving that ice is actually frozen water; the state capitals; designer jeans

8-12 Sex

Of course you need not worry too much about your child’s progress, because the school will keep you posted by means of report cards, which in most schools are now completely computerized to guard against the danger that anybody might be able to understand them. Our son’s report card looks like this:

AmStudSocBio 67 87 1123.43

54.45% PhysLangMath 1223.44343 4-4

SocMathStudAm—2948

BioPhys 09849238409

Cincinnati 001020 004 East Pass

NOTE: Your Mileage May Vary.

When we get our son’s report card, we make a big show of examining it with concerned frowns identical to the ones we use when our mechanic shows us broken pieces of our car, but the truth is we have no idea how well our son is doing.

Enrolling Your Children In Several Dozen After-School Activities

Believe it or not, there was once a time when parents did not enroll their