So, say, just hypothetically, that your kid comes home from school and tells you that Charles Dickens's Great Expectations is the next book up on the syllabus and that his teacher has introduced that novel to the class by announcing, "You won't like it."

And, say, just hypothetically, that you're not only the kid's parent but a person who's madly in love with Great Expectations, which you first read in high school and have read twenty or thirty times since.

Well, as that great pedagogue Wackford Squeers so convincingly explains, "Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human natur"; and sometimes an overly well read mother does best to keep her mouth shut.  Nonetheless, although this particular hypothetical parent understands that it is her hypothetical kid's dearest wish that his mother not schedule a berate-the-teacher meeting, she is not above bouncing into the kitchen and throwing up her hands melodramatically and forcing her long-suffering family to submit to windy complaints and perorations about English teachers who are apparently striving to teach their students to hate English literature.

But I mean, really: what's going on here?

Thank goodness there's professional wrestling tonight to take my mind off these inanities.