SPECIAL

If Erma Bombeck had been handed a syllabus from an elite kindergarten, she might have written it like this:

Kindergarten these days isn’t what it used to be. When I was five, your “special place in the world” was the corner of the sandbox you didn’t have to share with Joey, who ate paste. But at Ryan’s school—where the tuition is high enough to make your mortgage blush—self-discovery is a unit, not a happy accident.

The first assignment: “What makes me unique and special?” I thought the answer would be “I can tie my shoes” or “I don’t eat the crayons anymore.” But this is an advanced kindergarten. These kids had to pass interviews and skills assessments just to get in. I half-expected to see “I am special because I can recite the periodic table in Mandarin.”

So imagine our delight when the phone rang. It wasn’t even October yet. The headmaster summoned us, and if you’ve never been summoned by a headmaster, let me assure you, it’s like being called to the principal’s office, only the furniture is more expensive and the coffee is worse.

There he sat, holding Ryan’s homework like it was radioactive. In bold, black, kindergarten scrawl: “I AM NOT SPECIAL.” Not “I like baseball.” Not “I have a brown dog.” Just a philosophical bombshell in all caps.

He asked us, “Is Ryan…okay?” We assured him Ryan was as normal as any kid who thinks ketchup is a vegetable.

That night, we had the talk. “Ryan, do you really think you’re not special?”

He looked at us, all the wisdom of Socrates in a Star Wars T-shirt, and said, “Dad, if everyone is special, then there is nothing special about being special. So I AM NOT SPECIAL.”

That’s when we knew: we weren’t raising a kindergartner. We were raising a philosopher. And we were in for a very, very long ride.