"Fried Fridays: Dawning of a 'new' era..."

Out of the mouths of babes...

OK, out of the mouth of a 5th grader...

Fine, then, from the handwriting of a 5th grader. Geesh....

Dateline: ALLEGAN, MICHIGAN

Meet Kenton Stufflebeam, the observant 5th grade student from Alamo Elementary near Kalamazoo, MI. He loves his earth science class and totally respects the information taught in class by his teacher John Chapman.

Seems there was one day where Mr. Chapman was talking about various geologic periods, epochs, and eras...and almost 'slipped up' and called the "Precambrian" part of the time scale an "era", which it is not, and making that point with the students (FYI, Precambrian is simply everything after the origin of the Earth and before Cambrian...not a defined stop/start time-frame...the oldest of the old rock formations.)

And so the Stufflebeam family heads to Washington, DC where among many other attractions spent time at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, an endless candy shop for young Kenton.

Of the many parts to that treasure chest of a museum, there stands "Tower of Time", a display covering prehistoric time his class had recently spent time studying. Millions upon millions have passed by the exhibit since it opened in 1981...and only now did a 5th grader point out a glaring error to his dad Kevin: in bold block letters the exhibit labeled the Precambrian as an 'ERA'.


(GASP!)


He and his dad went to the information desk to tell them of the mistake, and were asked to fill out a comment form. Their good and corrective deed for the day was done.

Lo and behold, a letter arrived at the Stufflebeam house, fresh from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, thanking him for his astute observation which was dubbed "spot on". They solved the dilemma by simply painting over the word. Interesting, too, that while no one publicly caught the gaffe, some of the staff noted it early on as being inappropriate, but someone somewhere sometime somehow gave it the 'go ahead' to be written that way anyway.

I laughed hardest over the fact that the letter's author screwed up the address...twice, no less. The city was written as "Allegany" instead of "Allegan"...and as if "Stufflebeam" wasn't unique enough, they screwed that up as well, sending it to Kenton "Slufflebeam".

I think that person should quit while they're behind...