The Department of Redundancy Department

Yesterday in Roo's second grade class (in which I, along with parents of all the kids, serve as an educational assistant once a week), the teacher asked the class to define the word "tryout," as used in a story about a kid wanting to be on a baseball team.

The class smartypants, who actually is quite bright but sees himself as the sun around which all others must orbit, raised his hand and said, "Tryout means when you want to be on a team, and so you try out for it." The teacher responded that that was the idea, but he needed to use words other than "try out" to explain it. "Oh. Well, it's like, he wants to try...to play on the team...so he goes out to try." Nah. Three or four students later, we finally had a workable definition that didn't involve the words "try" and "out" -- and to be fair to young Mr. Know-It-All, it wasn't the easiest assignment I've ever had. 

Later, in a discussion of the food pyramid, and in particular the "oils and discretionary calories" component thereof, the teacher suggested that students might look up the word "discretionary" at home that night. So, good parent that I sometimes try to be, I went online to prep Roo for the assignment. And here is how the first Google dictionary entry defined it.

Merriam Webster: If you're looking for writers in about 15 years, I have a name for you.

btw: "Oils and discretionary calories"???