MIddle sis was on a project a while back where the client had hired this outside expert freelancer who was super-anal and felt she had to double-and-triple check everything, yet had no reading comprehension skills whatsoever. Or general comprehension skills, really. She would read an activity such as the one where the students were to cut a toilet paper tube to make a bracelet (decorated with Aztec symbols; yes, it was a totally stupid art activity), miss the part where it said "Cut the tube," and go on and on about how she had tested the activity and been unable to fit the tube around an average eight-year-old's wrist.

The best was when there was this map activity where the kids were supposed to estimate the distance a ship would travel when sailing around a cape of land from one port to another. Crazy expert lady was all YOU MUST PROVIDE TEACHERS WITH A SAMPLE ANSWER, so middle sis sat down with a rubberband and measured the distance the ship would travel. Then she and our boss got stuck on a conference call with crazy expert lady during which crazy expert lady insisted middle sis's figures were like three times too big.

"You see," crazy expert lady explained condescendingly, "as the crow flies, the distance between the two cities must be about 300 miles."

"AS THE CROW FLIES???" Middle sis gasped.

"Ssh," our boss said. "It's just an expression."

"NO," middle sis protested. "It's a ship. It's on the water. Sailing around the land. Not flying across it."

And faced with reason, crazy expert lady had to back down once again.