Riddle me this?

Q. How do you get a six-year-old to read a note written by Mommy?

I’ve been trying to come up with ways to stay connected to Carter during the school day. Getting him to tell me about his day is like pulling teeth, even when I vary the questions and use all of my social worker skill.

One way to keep the connection is to send a note in his lunch. So, every night I have carefully written out a little note for him, including his menu and possibly a bit of mama stuff, like “this afternoon we will go swimming,” or “I can’t wait to hear about music class.” Every evening, I have unpacked his lunch and found the note, unopened, in its baggie. Adding insult to injury, he says, “What was that in my lunch today?” (A-hem. . . it was on the carefully printed post-it).

Last night, I almost gave up. Then I remembered one of his favorite websites.

Today, the note in his bag was folded like one of those Mad Magazine back pages, so he could expand and read:
Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Spell.
Spell who?
W.H.O.!!

On our way home today he said, “I thought your knock-knock joke was pretty funny. Maddie didn’t get it. She did tell me a really funny one about an interrupting cow though. . . . . ”

It was all I could do not to race across the field with arms in a victory sign- I answered the riddle!

A. Include a knock-knock joke, lose all the other boring information.