You Think It Was That One Glass of Wine in the Third Trimester?

I'm not bragging, but my kids are smart. Just today, Billy came home to tell me he'd moved up three places to 27th in his class of 340. (A major corporate relocation or an epidemic of some sort and he could make it to the top 5 % before he graduates. Just kidding. Really.) And Ben always hits the highest percentiles on standardized tests.

But sometimes I wonder about these boys. You will too when I tell you about the thank you notes. (Yes, that would be the Christmas thank you notes. I ask you -- is it better that they write them promptly or that they write them, period?)

My boys -- who both have jobs; who sometimes wash their own clothes when they're beginning to run out (you know what they say about good help); who have checking accounts they've yet to overdraw -- still don't address their own correspondence. They write it; they stick it in the envelope; they expect me to do the rest.

This year, though, they helped ... a little. They wrote the name of the addressee on each envelope.

At the very top.

Without a last name.

I was left with a stack of sealed envelopes with things like "Uncle Joe" and "Dee-dah" scrawled on them in big letters. (Please imagine the graphic I'd insert here if only I could figure out how to do it.) Suspecting these names would not be particularly helpful to the letter carrier, I slapped big white address labels over them and wrote the recipients' grown-up names on the envelopes. And mailed them. And worried a little about what's going to happen in 18 months when Billy leaves for college.

But at least he knows what to do with cheese.

Ben came to me a couple of weeks ago with a yellow square in his hand. He handed it to me. It was a Kraft single. And then he said:

"How do you open this?"

Maybe he's been cheating on those tests.