All Intensive Purposes

Even when he's not in the classroom, Michael Bérubé likes to educate:

Though no one sent me the memo, yesterday was Staring Day. Jamie and I did our usual drill, swimming at the Y, playing basketball, and running sundry errands around town, and two or three times in the course of the day, people just gawked at him as if they’d never seen a person with Down syndrome in public before. When we were in Target getting some of the materials for his science project, one kid, who looked about 10 or 11, stopped in his tracks, backed up a few steps, and peered around an aisle to look at Jamie. So I decided to give this kid something to think about. “Jamie,” I said. “What are we supposed to be building again?” (This was a real question, by the way. I kept calling the thing an “angioplast,” because I am not always so wise in the ways of science.) “Angiosperm,” Jamie replied. “Right,” I said. “Monocot or dicot?” “Monocot,” Jamie said. “OK, and do you want purple or blue for the petals?” I asked. “Hmmm,” Jamie mused, “maybe aqua.” We left that kid mid-aisle in a slack-jawed stupor. In a pleasant way, of course. Let’s hope we advanced the common good.

If I'm not mistaken, Jamie is in the seventh grade.