"It's a good sport as they go. Well, as the ones with enough to write statistics articles about go, I'd probably have had a slightly easier time generating a sincere interest in gymnastics but I think there's less material without the team aspect and the noisy performance information."

"On the other hand creating a statistical model for it might be a genuinely interesting problem."

"Maybe I'll whip something up in time for the next national meet."

He grins. "That'd be impressive."

"I'm mostly being facetious but I'll probably at least write a post about how I'd start if I were going to."

"Maybe I'll pick it up and do it," he says, archly. "Giving you the credits for the idea, of course."

"Go for it. If I decide I wish I'd kept it I'll do figure skating."

"I'd have to brush up on my stats, I haven't read anything about it other than your blog since I picked up a book on it for fun a couple of years ago."

"My reference is Soshal's Statistical Encyclopedia but it might not be the best textbook to learn from."

"I might only need to learn the more advanced stuff, I'm generally good with maths."

"That's handy."

"Yeah! Got picked on a bit when I was a kid because of that but after I bit one of the other kids hard enough to draw blood they stopped that."

"Grey schools have so much of a problem, and I don't know what should be done about it."

"Yeah. After that I actually got in some more trouble when I tried to stand up for other kids that were being bullied. First time I broke my arm was when a bunch of other kids decided to gang up on me but at least that the school punished."

"Well, it's good that they draw lines sometimes somewhere."

"It's just kids being kids. Some roughhousing is normal at that age. Do you remember when you were that age? Surely you wouldn't have wanted adults meddling. Oh he'll be better next week. It builds character," he recites.

"You'll never fit in with your peers if you call in authority figures over every little thing. She says you fell down the stairs, and let's be honest, that sounds like something you'd do. Of course emotions were running high after the big match. I'm sure your little friends were just upset that you didn't qualify for the next grade of team, they want to play with you, don't you want to play with them. Why do you even have encrypted documents."

"—encrypted documents?"

"So people wouldn't read my diary."

"...and why were they trying to read your diary, what the fuck."

"Because they were jerks."

Sigh. "Grey kids."

"In fairness, there were less jerky grey kids. They just weren't as memorable."

"I mean yeah but they also didn't do anything about the jerks. It's, like you said, a problem."

"I don't think I blame my fellow three year olds for not standing between me and jerks. That's a lot to put on a kid who has to keep coming back to school every day themselves too."