School Berenisms

The Human Abacus
After 2 weeks of Beren finishing his math homework in under 2 minutes, I suggested to his teacher that he was ready for something a little more challenging.
When confronted with the much larger numbers, Beren looked at me in consternation. "How am I going to solve that?!" he demanded. "The most I can do is 20."
Whereupon he promptly whipped off his socks and planted his bare toes on the lip of the kitchen table, presumably to have all the necessary calculating tools to hand.

The Sins of Others
From our conversation the previous day I knew that Beren wasn't overly fond of the substitute who was covering for his sick teacher. When he came home from school on the second day I asked,
"How was is today?"
"About the same," he responded.
Then after climbing onto my lap for some snuggles,
"She's so . . . . . fierce.
She's fierce and I don't like it. I'm not even the problem. It's the other kids in my class. They're the problem. I'm trying to be part of the solution!"