Aside from a nifty CNN special on Jonestown blaring at the airport as we boarded our connecting flight and my son slightly offending a teenager by calling out "Hey, girls!" to her and her younger sisters, holiday travel was pretty uneventful Sunday night.  In a packing frenzy beforehand, I made sure to bring the little guy's school work with us, a small amount of papers and reading material that includes the booklet.

The booklet had my husband wanting to know what kind of sick joke the teacher had decided to play on us through our son's homework.  The booklet had me cringing in agony at its title and wondering how we were going to get through this time in our lives.  We contemplated calling up the kiddo's teacher and asking if he could have a new booklet without that title on it, but we asked the little guy if he wanted to change it and he said no.  Said booklet has been the cause of exclamations vacillating from cynical laughter to upsetting anger.  I find it to be less than coincidental that after we saw the booklet, we discovered that our desktop computer of eight years wasn't loading its operating system, and then New Orleanians living on the east bank of the river had to boil their water for two days.

My son must fill the booklet with answers to questions about George W. Bush.

Sure, we could probably demand that the kid do a report on a different president, as there are 40-plus to choose from and only 20-plus students in the class, but he doesn't want to change it.  A look at the questions he must answer makes this thing seem like it isn't so bad: basics like when was your president born and where, who was your president's spouse, with which party was your president affiliated?  When Dan and I got to some of the last questions, that's when things went off the rails for us:

• What  was the name(s) of the Vice-President(s) who served with your president?

Dan's instantaneous answer was "DICK". My incredulous look elicited a simple "Well, it's true."  

And then:

• Write at least two interesting facts about your president.

• What were this president’s major accomplishments during his term? 

Dubya's time in the White House is now a part of history - but it's still too recent for the two of us - and for most of the people we know - to treat that history in a disinterested way.  I'm loath to even look up any facts related to this man simply because we all lived too many of those facts.

So I throw this open to all of you who check in over here from time to time.  The poll is below; it'll be finishing next week.  Feel free to leave me any additional comments, prospective answers to these questions, or evidence of your own incredulity as I check in on this post from time to time.



Happy turkey to all and be thankful you or your offspring aren't faced with this assignment.