My daughter goes in today for her first official test.  She’s entering Kindergarten this fall, and very excited about it.  We’ve been going over colors and vocabulary, math and very basic spelling, and everyone was in great spirits right up until yesterday afternoon.

We are a pretty informal family.  Katie is just…Katie.  Now things have changed, and all of a sudden she is being introduced to the world as Katie Wilson.  What we discovered was that we have never bothered to teach her to spell her last name.  The occasion to use that last name has never really materialized, and she has done so well on every other aspect of preparing for the test that it just slipped our minds.

In the grand scheme of things, we all know this isn’t going to be a big setback.  In fact, Katie herself is quite calm about it.  Still, it’s that first moment where you think you have something completely nailed, and you realize things slip between the cracks.  It’s hard not to count it as the first slash mark on the board where parental failures during the school years are tallied.

In any case, Katie, who is a trooper,  has been reciting the letters of her name over and over, and when I left this morning she was industriously copying her full name on a piece of typing paper in eerily legible script for a five year old.  I suppose I won’t panic, but I doubt I’ll be able to prevent myself from buying her a congratulatory present.

From here on out, her life will be all about tests, particularly for the next couple of decades.  Look out Kindergarten, and world.  Katie Wilson has arrived…