Overheard Parents on the Upper West Side

Here's a few of my favorite overheard parental conversations I've heard around the neighborhood:

By the elevator of a West End Ave. apartment building:
Exasperated Parent: We've got to do something, and I mean now. This school is failing our kids. There's no structure. They're not learning....[there's] no math. They're certainly not reading anything. It's simply unacceptable...[I mean] what are they doing there all day, playing?
Incredulous Parent: Well it is PRE-school.

At the top of a snowy hill in Riverside Park:
Sincere Parent: Now son, before you can sled down the hill can you remember what daddy taught you about the coefficient of friction?
Forlorn Son: Waaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!

Whether these examples are symptomatic of the Upper West Side MPYCs (Mature Parents w/Young Children) or simply our proximity to Columbia University, I don't know, but at the risk of sounding discriminitory, I am beginning to feel like you can be too smart and/or too serious to have kids.