HOW TO TELL IF YOUR CHILD IS SOCIALLY AWKWARD OR MENTALLY DEFICIENT

Socially Awkward: Child cannot maintain eye contact with anyone.
Mentally Deficient: Child cannot stop staring at someone, often without blinking and usually for the length of the drive, flight or cruise.

Socially Awkward: Child cries when you step away for a moment.
Mentally Deficient: Child laughs when you choke on a peanut.

Socially Awkward: When guests come to house child hides in their room.
Mentally Deficient: When guests come to the house child hides behind the persona of “Mrs. Snickerbottom,” an elderly and exceptionally cantankerous woman who is quick with a withering comment or a cane upside the head.

Socially Awkward: Child is diagnosed as “highly sensitive.”
Mentally Deficient: Child doesn’t seem to mind getting punched.

Socially Awkward: Child falls behind in school because of unwillingness to speak up in class.
Mentally Deficient: Child hammers hand into lameness because of unwillingness to be one-upped by finger puppets.

Socially Awkward: Child can only make imaginary friends.
Mentally Deficient: Child applies lipstick and panties to fridge and starts calling it “Food Mommy.”

Socially Awkward: Child tends to talk into his or her chest.
Mentally Deficient: Child tends to talk through a hastily fashioned mask of bunny carcasses.

Socially Awkward: Child is incapable of expressing their opinion.
Mentally Deficient: Child has been known to tell off trees.

Socially Awkward: Child is only comfortable with the familiar.
Mentally Deficient: Child has been singling the same commercial jingle for 11 months, without stopping and at an ever-increasing volume.

Socially Awkward: Child is afraid to go anywhere there might be crowds.
Mentally Deficient: Child is afraid to go anywhere there might be “The Sunboy.”

Socially Awkward: Child gets nervous when asked to speak in public.
Mentally Deficient: Child gets nervous when asked what’s with all the tools and spare teeth.

Socially Awkward: Child often complains of “butterflies” in their stomach.
Mentally Deficient: Child often complains of termites in their wrists.

Socially Awkward: Child is afraid of being judged by their peers.
Mentally Deficient: Child is afraid of being sentenced to a mining colony planet.

Socially Awkward: Child doesn’t participate in team sports.
Mentally Deficient: Child doesn’t go anywhere without a baseball bat, football helmet and biathlon rifle.

Socially Awkward: Child avoids other children.
Mentally Deficient: Child has picture of every classmate pinned to wall, some with red “X’s” over their faces, others with scrawled dates still pending.