Capital Punishment

"We have to learn all of the states' capitals." Big Kid told me when I asked about his homework.

"Yeah, we had to, too. You have an awesome memory, you'll do great."

"I only remember Tallahassee."

"You should make flash cards," I offered.

"To be honest, I don't really want to. It seems kind of pointless. It's not like a job interviewer is going to ask me the capital of North Dakota." He has an excellent point there.

"Yeah," I tried to think back to the last time I needed to know a state capital as an adult, recalling the pain of learning all of that crap via rote memorization. "It's helpful in trivia games or if you're on Jeopardy. Or if you're the president. You should make some flash cards."

"Ugh. I'll probably never be on Jeopardy. And we have to do a whole packet about this stuff in 2 days. Only 2 days to do it."

"Suck it up, buttercup," I replied, tiring of the conversation.

"It's not the homework in general, it's that there's so little time to do it. And I disagree with the idea of the homework." He insisted.

Big Kid is majorly over the school year. I am majorly over hearing Big Kid complain about how tired of school he is--at this point I would homeschool him for the last grading period of each year just to make it stop.

And I probably wouldn't ask him to memorize the state capitals, that's why we have google. Every time I do simple math on my phone's calculator, I hear Mr. Eder saying "You won't have calculators all of the time when you're an adult, you can't always use a calculator!" Uh, yeah, I can, with absolutely no shame at all.

"Yeah. You should make flash cards."