>role reversal

>I came home from the July Fourth Fireworks to find La Petite sitting on the couch holding a clipboard: my clipboard, with my latest and greatest rough draft of a grad school project. She had pen in hand and was proofreading, revising, and making suggestions.
I used to do this for her. The last time I proofed one of hers was a full three years ago, when she was a freshman in college. Now she helps her friends when they need advice, and now, yes, now, she’s helping her mother.
The comments all sound like a 21-yr-old. Here’s a sampling:

This is a long and confusing sentence.
What the cr** is this supposed to mean?
Make this verb active, not passive.
Check APA style.
Is this really related to (the topic)?
RUN ON! OMG!

Then there were the comments she made that built on my own comments and revisiions.
My notes: Run-on
Hers: Yup. You dangled a participle, too.
My notes: best word?
Hers: Yes.

The next morning she referred to my run-on sentences as “Awesome” as in “Mom, that run-on sentence that was the whole paragraph by itself? That was awesome.”
Maybe she meant awe-inspiring. After all, I did teach her writing class in 6th grade. She got some of her skills from me, somehow.
Later, though, she had to ask me how many cups were in a quart. Then she had to ask if we had any three-quart containers for the planting kit she wanted to assemble. Snicker. Mom still knows best. Wait…I was her math teacher in 6th grade, too….

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6 thoughts on “>role reversal

  1. >That is too funny! I was just my daughter’s teacher…very interesting experience!

    Scary how things change over the years!

  2. >If my Ben or Anna ever get to the point where they are red-penning my work, my head may explode from the sheer force of the total oddness of it all. Then again… I sincerely hope they will have the skills and the guts to do it.

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