Scuttlebutt in the teacher's room Wednesday: there is a new insult in the third grade. Are you ready? It's "butt-cheese." No adult is exactly sure what it means but it must be something very bad, because the boy who came up with it (after being provoked by another kid) promptly burst into pre-emptive tears because he feared retribution for having uttered such an obscene oath.

I think it ranks up there with Shakespeare's "lily-livered fool."

Also, I am sad to report that the new epithet has taken root and flourished in our household, bringing our relationship down to new, previously unexplored lows of immaturity. C and I are now calling each other "Butt-cheese," over every little thing.

"Who's the butt-cheese that left the half 'n' half out on the counter?"

"It was you, Butt-cheese-head!" Etc. Things can only get worse from here.

I learn so many new things at the elementary school. For instance "heelies": those are the little roller-skate heels embedded in really cool sneakers. And D.S.'s: it's some kind of video game. Even little immigrant children, fresh off the plane from Afghanistan, know that one. And I get to be present at the birth of great lines of poetry in the first grade, like today, when I kid said, "I am a person skateboarding on the rainbow."

But this takes the cake. Butt-cheese. You read it here first.