A Common Core For All of Us

The Real Emotion Spurring Common Core Opposition
PHOENIX, AZ - OCTOBER 11: Ella Richardson helps Aidan Sawyer during class on October 11, 2013 at Horseshoe Trails Elementary School in Phoenix, AZ. Formal keyboarding instruction at the school began this year for second-graders, in anticipation of the Common Core curriculum. (Photo by David Jolkovski for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
PHOENIX, AZ - OCTOBER 11: Ella Richardson helps Aidan Sawyer during class on October 11, 2013 at Horseshoe Trails Elementary School in Phoenix, AZ. Formal keyboarding instruction at the school began this year for second-graders, in anticipation of the Common Core curriculum. (Photo by David Jolkovski for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

I COULDN’T get a cab. A sketchy-looking guy hunkering around the entrance of the Grand Hyatt in San Diego showed me his bicycle. “Climb on, lady,” he said. “I’ll take ya.”

I thought it over. “O.K.,” I said.

So that was how I arrived -- balanced on the back of a bicycle seat -- at my destination, a restaurant where I was meeting two writer friends, Colum McCann and Sheri Fink. I gave the man 10 bucks, and asked him for his name, which he said was Cuckoo.

“Cuckoo?” I asked.

“In the best way of all,” he said, and then rode off.

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