A few weeks ago my sixth grade was going to critique Danny's essay in response to this question: If you could spend an afternoon with any author, living or dead, with whom would you spend it? What would you talk about?

Danny can be annoying, he's often lazy, but every once in a while I realize I don't give him enough credit; in any other class he'd be a star. He wrote his essay on Dave Pilkey, author of the Captain Underpants series (which I'd never heard of, but his classmates knew what he was talking about). His essay contains the following endearing passage:

We could exchange ideas for books that he is planning to write, or make comic books. I always run out of ideas when I try to write a story or a comic book, and after I finish it sounds lame from a lack of ideas. He could help me when I get stuck and we could have fun writing, drawing, and reading books.

I like the good-natured honesty of "lame from a lack of ideas."
The transcripts of student essays that I hand out are anonymous, but of course they're all eager to know who the author is, and since Danny is the class expert on the literature of silly and indecent humor, I and Danny, in his way, were the only ones keeping up the pretense of anonymity. Danny was torn between embarrassment and pride, and he dealt with his mixed emotions by hamming it up: whenever we pointed out a flaw (but mostly we said good things), he'd shake his head and sigh, "I can't believe the author made such a foolish mistake." In my printed transcript I had written "Dan" for "Dave," and Danny asked me, "Ms —, how could you make such a mistake?" And I answered in the same sorrowful tone that he was using, "Well Danny, some students' handwriting is not what it should be." The class erupted in laughter: "Ooh, she got you there!" Danny was laughing too.