My elementary school teacher wife and her colleague were talking the other day at Scout's soccer game. I overheard Cristie recapping to Liz a testy exchange she'd had with an administrator, "So I wrote down there .... And then she wrote back up .... And so I wrote back down ...."

The teachers have e-mail, so I chuckled at the notion that they think of e-mailing "down" to the office and getting e-mails back "up" to the classroom.

Nope, Cristie and Liz informed me. They don't do this via e-mail. To "write down" to the office, they write little notes and give them to a student to deliver. If they're writing something innocuous, they'll give any old kid the note. But if they're sending a particularly nasty message to an administrator or another teacher, they make sure they pick a poor reader to send the note down with.

"If Bryant comes into my room with a note," Liz said. "I know it's probably trouble."