Other Peoples' Mail

As happens to most of us from time to time, we received a letter in the mail that was sent to the wrong address. I opened it by mistake, but when I realized my error I read it anyway. Oops! Don't tell me you've never done that...

This mistake turned out to be well worth it. It's from a Catholic K-8 school in South Minneapolis.

"Dear 5th & 6th Students and Parents,

A recent in-depth and exhaustive study by a team of [school name] psychologists has determined that 3 out of 4 [school students] are spending too much time engaging the left side of the brain while under utilizing the right side. Harmful effects of this behavior have recently been linked to Global Warming, subprime mortgages, and confusion about the Electoral College."

Thinking this must be a joke, I continued reading the second paragraph:

"We don't know how reliable the findings are, but we would rather not take our chances. To help combat this disturbing trend, fifth and sixth grade students will migrate to the right side of their brain and spend a whole day devoted to creativity and ingenuity over on the right side."

The letter is accompanied by a two page list of "right brain" activities such as Cake Decorating, Law - What does a courtroom lawyer do? (that's right brain?) and Pilates.

Chris assures me that the letter was an attempt at facetiousness, merely a clever way of introducing a "fun" day at school (at a cost of $10).

I admire an attempt at humor, but since when is the Catholic church known for being funny? Laughable at times, but I don't think that's intentional. They are located in South Minneapolis, bastion of liberalism, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and checked out the school's website to see if humor is their normal communication standard. Nope, about as uptight as you might imagine.

Maybe Chris is right and the more I think about it, this has to be a joke. School psychologists really conducted a study about brain usage and correlation to ignorance in the general population??

Serious or not, it certainly made me laugh...