While we’re on the subject of things my father used to like to say, here’s another: he was, to his estimation, “the littlest human” to graduate with his high school class. Five-foot-nothing and 93 pounds wringing wet. I will point out that he was sixteen at the time, and that later he grew to be a regular sized adult. He graduated at sixteen because he was able to skip first grade. It’s the events that made this possible that I am thinking about right now.

Aunt Helen was four years older. In the several years before my father started real school, she forced him to play school. She named him, for some unfathomable reason, Eddie Robinson, and required him to write this name on his daily written assignments. Apparently, she knew what she was doing, because when he started school, he could already read and write, and went directly to second grade.

I’ve heard it said that the parents are a child’s first teachers, but apparently a strong-willed older sister can run a close second.