No Friction Homework
When my children were about 11, 9, and 7 (I have twins so that’s four kids), the kids would arrive home after school, bus exhaust announcing their appearance. They’d walk up the driveway wearily, their shoulders weighed down by backpacks filled with textbooks, notebooks and most especially, reams and reams of worksheets of homework. Sometimes, on crisp autumn days they’d fling off their backpacks before they’d even walked a few steps, their burdens flying out in low arcs on the lawn and landing with a thud. Remorselessly earthbound, the frayed canvas objects refused to go airborne. I’d stand looking at the detritus of school, washed up by the tides of