My son came home from school today and informed me that Akash, a fellow fifth-grader, had given his "issues" to someone. I asked him what he meant by "issues." "Problems, duh!" he said. (Don't you just love it when kids respond to you with "Duh!"?) I asked him what it meant to "give" your issues to someone. He didn't respond, apparently because this question was too imbecilic to deserve a reply. "You mean, he told someone about his problems?" I asked. "Duh!" "Well, what are Akash's problems?" I asked. "I don't know," he said. "Well...how does somebody do that?" I asked, wondering if he was trying to tell me about some new psycho-therapeutic technique that fifth-graders have developed. "Maybe they talk into a tape recorder and then play back the tape for someone really fast while they run away," he said. End of conversation. Things have certainly changed since I was in the fifth grade.