Secret Identity

As part of his homework for school, Nathan is supposed to do 60 minutes of reading every week. His teacher chooses to monitor this with the help of reading logs. Every day Nathan is supposed to read from 10 to 15 minutes and write down what he read, how long he read, and the date he read it.

The thing is, Nathan loves to read. He simply hates to write anything down. Friday mornings we usually find ourselves scrambling to remember what he read, a task made more difficult by the fact that he also reads at school and at his dad's.

This past Friday Nathan insisted he'd read The Young Mark Twain for an hour.

Now, an hour is a long time, but I know Nate is capable of it. And I know Steve has this book because it used to live in the basement and recently made the trip to his house. I figured Nate probably did read the book for a little while. But it seemed like a challenging book for a seven-year-old.

So I thought I'd give him a test, a chance to show off.

"If you read that book then you must know Mark Twain's real name."

Nate nodded uncertainly. "Yeah!" he said. "It's Batman. Right?"

I gave him a funny look because I didn't get it at first. Mark Twain was Samuel Clemens, and I explained this to Nate, wondering why he would try to pass off reading the book with such an obvious untruth. I mean, Batman... Batman was... Bruce Wayne.

Bruce Wayne.

Not Mark Twain.

And then I started laughing.

Because I know Nate did spend time reading the book, and I imagine him sitting there, gripping it, turning pages eagerly, thinking he was reading about the early life of Batman.