It’s officially spring break at my school, which should be a lovely thing, but the week has been occupied with nastiness.

On Monday, I had the first of several meetings with school officials about what’s to be done with Ian for next year. Special school or regular education? I want him in regular ed and the school officials want him elsewhere. Nobody wants a boy who is easily distracted and still doesn’t have enough verbal skills to properly explain to a stranger what he did over the weekend. His impressive mental feats don’t impress them.

Later that day, there was a trip to the dentist, where the hygienist scraped my teeth with an ice pick for 45 minutes. The rest of the week has been devoted to the mountain of midterms.

To insure maximum fairness, I flip over the front cover of the midterm and then blind-grade. Otherwise, I get all sympathetic and give everyone A’s. Still, cover folding is not a foolproof system. The women have completely different handwriting from the men. The women aren’t necessarily neater, but their letters are bigger and rounder. Since there aren’t that many women in my class, I usually have some clue about the author of exam.

Why do women and men have such different handwriting styles?