Deficit

“Aiden...Aiden!”

Little six-year-old Aiden sprawled himself all over his desk. He looked up in awe. From me sitting next to him to the rows of binders in the bookshelves, so many things in the room tried to grab his attention. His head jerked liked a rooster as he turned his head to look at everything.

I pointed to the letters in his workbook page with my pen, trying to get his attention back. “Aiden, sit up and focus!”

He sat up, and sensing that I had his attention, I asked him again, “Can you find the words with consonant blends in this sentence? You found two already. I see two more.” In my head, I knew that the only reason he had already found two was that his finger happened to blindly land on the right words.

“This one!” he pointed at a word. “E-S!”

“No, Aiden. Again, consonant blends are only made up of consonants.”

“This one!” he pointed at another word. “E-E!”

“Aiden, do you remember what consonants are?”

“Not a, e, i, or u! This is one?” he pointed at another word.

“Well, technically, in this word, T-H is not a consonant blend because the T-H sound makes one distinct sound, but it just happens to be represented as two letters in English. C-R would be a consonant blend because each letter in the pair represents a distinct sound—”

Aiden’s head jerked toward the ceiling, and then down at the carpet.

“Y’know what, Aiden, you’re absolutely right! I didn’t see that one at all. There are still two more words with consonant blends in this sentence. Can you find them?”

“This one! E-A!”

“Ok, you clearly need to review. Let’s flip a few pages back to the lesson that first introduced consonant blends.” I started flipping back in his workbook, thinking that I could easily find a whole page about consonant blends a few pages back, but it was actually a lot farther back than I thought.

“Here we got, Consonant blends. Wow this was almost two months ago in March.” I scanned the page, and upon reaching the bottom, I froze. I saw a very familiar excersise: Fill in the blanks with your own letters to make a word! b r _ _ _. The letters e-a-d were scribbled in the blanks.

This was the page that compelled me to go home and complain about retard kids to Ranier.



Ranier:
I don’t wanna argue anymore. There’s no way I can get through your narrow minded ass. Out of all people I thought you would actually be understanding. Talk to me once you stop being stubborn and get a reality check
Ranier signed off at 22:39:50 on 03/17/10.

I stared at my computer monitor. Oops.

bbq dinner:
So the tard argument picked up where it left off last night.

Trung:
Brian. I thought I told you what to do. WHY DIDN’T YOU DO IT.

bbq dinner:
I thought I could do it my way.

Trung:
NO.
YOUR WAY
IS ALWAYS THE WRONG WAY.

bbq dinner:
I just tried to justify why I can call tard kids stupid.

Trung:
If it didn’t work yesterday, why would it work today?
Brian, you know he’s totally right. That’s such a jerk thing to argue for lol.

bbq dinner:
Well what should I do now? I think he’s willing to break up over this.

Trung:
You’ll break up over other things, but not this.

bbq dinner:
BUT THEY ARE STUPID. YOU AGREE RIGHT?!?! Remember nanny-boob-grabbing boy?

Trung:
stfu you know my opinions without me having to state it. I am not going to make you think you’re right in this. GO APOLOGIZE LOL. IT’S NOT THAT HARD. “I was insensitive about the situation. I know how you feel about the matter and I respect that. I won't bring it up anymore.”

bbq dinner:
Ok, Imma go make the call.

Trung:
Wait, before you do it, what are you gonna say?! I need to approve this.

bbq dinner:
I was insensitive about the situation. I know how you feel about the matter and I respect that. I won't bring it up anymore.

Trung:
Ok sounds good.
You should try this when you get back: http://www.jesusdressup.com
It’s fun.

I headed outside to call Ranier. He picked up, and right away I just wanted to blurt out what I had been saying the night before: “There’s right and there’s wrong, and then there’s just reality. There’s no such thing as right or wrong in reality, there is only is. Whether or not it’s wrong for me to say it doesn’t change the fact that this retard kid is pretty stupid.” But I refrained.

“So how do you feel about these kids now?” Ranier asked.

“Uuuuhh, they’re human too, and I shouldn’t call them stupid just because they..uh..” What was a nicer word for stupid? “...just because they are slower than the rest.”

“So this is how you really feel? You’re not just sayin’ it for the sake of our relationship?”

“Yes, I’m not just saying that to save our relationship. I promise you that I’ll change.”



“Alright Aiden, 4:29! It’s time to wrap it up!”

“Stickers?!”

“Nope, no stickers, remember? You don’t get any during the last fifteen minute session.”

“Awwwww!”

“Yeah. BUT! Can you give me an example of a consonant blend now?”

“E-A!”

I nodded as I continued to force a goatse-wide smile across my face. “Alright, go on ahead and get outta here! I’ll see ya later.” Once he left, I leaned back in my chair, rocked a little, and rolled my eyes real good.