Learning his letters

Little 5-year-old Benjy was practicing spelling on the fridge using a set of magnetic letters. Freda, his mother, had watched him put together words such as “mom,” “dad,” “dog,” “cat” and “car” and was very proud of her clever son.

But then Benjy shouted out, “Look what I spelled, Mommy.”

Freda looked at the fridge and saw that he had put up the three magnetic letters: “G” “O” “D.”

“Why, that’s wonderful, Benjy,” she said. “Why don’t you leave them on the fridge until Daddy comes home?”

“OK, Mommy,” he said.

But just as Freda was thinking that the Jewish kindergarten he went to was starting to have an impact, Benjy’s little voice called out, “Mommy, how do you spell ‘zilla’?”

© david minkoff