BREAKING: There May Be Another Kina In 2nd Grade

Experts skeptical; “I’m in both first AND second grade!”

I guess what happened—and the narrative here is unclear—is that yesterday, in the schoolyard, there were parents of an unknown Kina who were recognized by some teacher or another. Somehow, this (our) Kina became aware of that teacher having recognized the parents of the other Kina—who is, apparently, in second grade at the very same school she currently attends. It is only possible that our Kina would know this because the aforementioned teacher had told her directly that the other Kina was in second grade, that being a fact which no other human being (the other Kina’s parents included) could plausibly have disclosed. This defies all probability, because Kina’s name is so vanishingly rare—a feature that her mother more or less demanded when we were thinking of names

¹

—that she appears to share it only with the singer Kina Grannis (after whom we did not name Kina) and a nineteenth-century Bulgarian suffragist (after whom we sort of did

²

). The likelihood that there would be another Kina in the grade immediately above her, and that nobody had thought in three years to mention how strange it was that there were two Kinas in adjacent class years is hilariously distant

³

, yet tantalizing.

I do not intend to ask whether or not there is actually a second grader named Kina, because I like the idea that there is exactly one Kina enrolled each year at the school around the corner, living just out of view and being an absolute charmer in ways that everybody keeps as their own precious secret.

dad

1. I basically would float names to Laurea and she would shoot them down by remembering the worst possible story about a person she knew who already had that name, shaking her head furiously and demanding I move on.

2. After reaching a point of exasperation over the names I could not select for our future daughter, we eventually turned to Wikipedia’s most valuable resource: “Lists of Women”, working our way through artists, architects, warriors in folklore, feminists, and (as noted) suffragists. We also did the goddesses, whence came her middle name, Tyche.

3. Devil’s advocates might point out that we live in Brooklyn, which would be a point well taken.