I had genuinely never struggled to convince somebody I’m not American, this is amazing.

Specifically American, too, because in your scenario being British or Irish wouldn’t have worked. I’m slightly relieved that you at least considered Australia eventually.

OK, how about this, I’ll give you a little bit. I shouldn’t because screw you, you don’t have a right to my life history, let alone to evaluate my cultural background against your arbitrary weird anglocentric preconceptions, but this is too fascinating to drop now.

So when I went to school our system was very into integration. I went to the same classroom as kids who had Down syndrome and cerebral palsy until I was maybe eleven, twelve? I genuinely don’t know what Americans call that grade or year, for us it would have been what, 4th, 5th? They’ve changed the structure and numbering now, so it’s hard to keep track. One of them had a habit of standing up in the middle of boring classes and start to randomly narrate sports matches out loud (soccer, specifically, because again, not American). We all thought that was awesome and hilarious, and thought he was cool and mostly were kinda nice to him as a result. He was a nice kid. I see him walking around town sometimes still.

That memory generally endeared me to integrating kids in classes where it makes sense, but I’ve heard enough counterpoints from professional educators about the uses of keeping kids with special needs in smaller classes to get more specific help that I don’t have a strong opinion about it. My understanding is that consensus on that one is reversed, and the kids in my life now that have specific needs are either in dedicated support groups or getting individual tutoring during the integrated classes. This is all public school I’m talking about.

Now, here’s the thing, I actually don’t know if that transition could have happened in the US because, again, I am not American and I’ve never been to school in the US. I assume all the tropes in movies aren’t fully accurate and Mean Girls and Dangerous Minds aren’t documentaries, but who knows? My point is that I don’t, and I’m not gonna be prescriptive about it or assume that everybody else’s experiences are the same as my own.