Totally Unqualified

They came into our speakeasy home like an Untouchables raid, all clipboards blazing.  A crackpot team of specialists assembled for one thing and one thing only—to seek and assess.

They call themselves E.I., which up until a week ago, I was under the impression stood for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  Or Evil Incarnate.  Or Excitable Introverts.  I wasn’t really sure.  Turns out it in their world it refers to Early Intervention, and they had come to find out if Bub was performing up the abilities of his adjusted age.

The quiet, presumably sagely Professor X-ish ringleader (assessing the assessors) said the word, and her team sprung to action.  There was a speech therapist, a cognitive development specialist, a developmental specialist and an occupational therapist (obviously unnecessary, as he is clearly a lazy piece of unemployment).  Anyway, it was all eyes on Bub.  And while the categories seemed pretty straightforward, I have to say I thought some of the tests were a little unfair.  Consider the following assessment tools:

1.    Cognitive development.  Bub was given a paper clip, a rubber band, a shard of glass (seemed dangerous to me), a pretzel rod and 42 inches of ordinary twine.  He had two minutes to construct a functioning transmitter radio and grow a mullet.  It’s not called The MacGyver for nothing.

2.   Speech development.  Bub was asked to present a full dissertation on the rise and fall of the Ming dynasty.  In Mandarin.

3.   Gross motor skills.  While I thought this was his shining moment (Bub has numerous gross motor skills), the judges seemed unimpressed by his drool and spit-up laden demonstration. 

4.   Fine motor skills.  Not messing around here.  Bub was asked to pilot a unicycle down Clark Street blindfolded while spinning stacks of plates on both hands.  You can imagine the results.

But all’s well that ends well, I guess.  Turns out Bub’s not really delayed at all.  Just annoying.  Needy.  Rather pig-headed.  But none of that qualifies him for services, apparently.  Anyway, the team swooped out almost as fast as they descended, clipboards in tow, curiosities satisfied, minimum requirements met.  And we were very happy to have wasted their time.