POW!

Three fifth graders came by the office the other day to visit at lunchtime. Two of them were there mainly to show off the shirts they had recently picked up at a museum. (The third, as you'll see from the picture, had something else in mind altogether.)


"POW!" I said cheerfully, hoping they'd congratulate me on my ability to read ALL CAPS. "Great shirts. Are they Batman-related?" I was not much of a Batman fan as a kid, but I do dimly remember the TV show, with the fight sequences that would pause so the POW! WHAM! OUCH! BOP! EEK! sound effects could appear on the screen. The style of the writing on the shirts reminded me of the series. (Right??)

"No," they said in that exasperated tone that only early middle school girls can achieve. "Look! This is what it stands for!" And they pointed one by one to the letters. "Problem Of the Week!"

POW! Problem of the Week! For two whole years these girls dealt every, well, week with the POW, which their teachers and I sometimes called the Problem of the Week but sometimes simply called the POW. The Problems of the Week, stored in my computer under the name of (what else) "POW stuff."

"Oh," I said, embarrassed. "Problem of the Week! Of course it stands for Problem of the Week. I knew that!"

And if I say it often enough, maybe it'll become true.