True confessions

Since school starts in the morning, I had to hurry and empty out Frank's backpack from last year.  That's right.  Since May Twenty-whatever, Frank's backpack has been hanging on its little peg chuck full of all the papers the teacher sent home on the last day (or maybe second to last day) of school.  I think I might have taken a peek at them back in May, but then we proceeded to just ignore the whole situation all summer long.  Now I'm left with a giant stack of last year's papers, and I have no idea what to do with them.  I decided to just chuck the whole stack, but thought I should look through it first, just in case there were any keepers.  I stumbled upon this gem:

Here's the translation:
I am proud to be an American because America is a free country.  I also like America because my sister thinks it's better to be beautiful than smart.  And what if I and sister lived in different countries? We wouldn't have someone to play with besides our friends.  And my favorite bird is an eagle.


When I first saw this paper, I thought about Angie and her feelings about cramming patriotism down the throats of our children.

I sometimes have to wonder exactly where this sort of stuff comes from.  What does America have to do with Elise thinking that it is better to be beautiful than smart?  Maybe Frank is just deep, and it's more connected than I initially thought.  Most likely though, he was just trying to think up enough words to fill in the space his teacher wanted him to fill in.