Mad Math

Today, we go back in time.

When I was growing up, I was pretty well-aware of the fact that for the most part, I was smarter than almost all my friends. (I also learned modesty at a young age). I learned quickly, and I was usually further ahead in development than most people around me. For example, when I was fairly young, I learned to tell time. This necessitated my parents changing the clocks in the house when they wanted me to go to bed, because I knew that 6pm wasn't 7pm, and my bedtime was 7. On a related note, I feel like they probably took advantage of their ability to move the hands of time, because I'm pretty sure I went to bed in the afternoon some days, when they were just tired of dealing with me. I have neither confirmed nor disproved this theory, but it sounds like something they would do. I do remember them trying to skip pages in the books they'd read to me at bedtime, but being the astute word memorizing 3-year-old I was, I corrected their mistakes, forcing them to go back to the pages they'd skipped and read them. Long story short, I was kind of an asshole.

Anyway, my brains usually landed me near the head of the class, and I breezed through my early schooling. Then came third grade. And my arch-nemesis Mrs. Adamo. She and I didn't get along from the get-go. The third day of school, I wasn't feeling well, and asked her if I could get some water. She refused, saying I could go when I finished my assignment. I told her I wasn't feeling well and she still refused. About 20 seconds after her last refusal, I unleashed projectile vomit all over my table, and a few of the people sitting around me. To add to this disastrous start, for some reason I had decided that third grade would be the year I was going to up the ante on being an asshole. In reality, Mrs. Adamo is probably a great teacher, but because she made me puke all over people on day 3, and she was standing in the way of my desire to be an eff-up, I don't remember her fondly. Perhaps my biggest play came when our class embarked upon Mad Math. I know you all remember those. They're more commonly known as multiplication tables. We'd all put away our workbooks and Mrs. Adamo would hand out the quiz for whatever number we were on. We all started at one (1x1 all the way up to 1x12), and if we got a perfect score we'd move up to two, and so on. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say we all passed 'one' on the first try, even the kid in the class who ate his own hair. Once we got to two, were it wasn't simply writing down the number after the 'x', the class started to break up into groups. The hair eaters, the averages, and then the geniuses. Of course, the genius group included myself. I got a perfect score each week, and was in the running with one or two other classmates to finish first (the last Mad Math test being 12s). When we got to about nine or ten, I decided that I needed to do something to ensure that I won. The winner got a prize. The prize was probably a Lisa Frank eraser and pencil set (or Hotwheels for dudes), but I freaking wanted it to go with my Lisa Frank dolphin trapper keeper. There was another girl right in the running with me, and I HAD to beat her.

We got to the 12s a few days later. I don't know if you remember, but when you're 8, 12x1 all the way to 12x12 in a minute or less can be very difficult math (at this stage in life I've lost pretty much all ability to do math in my head, so I'd probably lose to an 8-year-old). That's when I developed my brilliant plan. I would write down ALL the answers on a small piece of paper, place the paper in my pencil box, and then open my pencil box right as Mrs. Adamo said "begin." My brilliant plan, as you've probably all gathered, was to cheat. I knew it was probably a bad idea, but I was desperate to win the Lisa Frank shit. I told my friend Lindsey about my brilliant plan, and she decided she want to do it too. She was on the 8s, so I wasn't worried about her beating me. Test time approached. We both placed our pencil boxes neatly at the edge of our desks. Mrs. Adamo told us to begin, and with a quick knowing smile at one another, Lindsey and I opened our pencil boxes and started. I completed the quiz quickly, because writing down numbers doesn't take much time. When Mrs. Adamo called "time", I confidently strode up to her desk with my completed quiz, prepared to triumphantly claim my pencil and eraser set. Then it all went to hell.

Mrs. Adamo got up from her desk to make a cursory sweep of the room. She walked right by my desk, where I, the IDIOT, had forgotten to close my pencil box. So the evidence of my cheating was sitting right there in front of everyone. She passed by it and I breathed a sigh of relief. She adjusted the curtain in the back of the room, and then started to walk back. Without even a second look, she bee-lined straight for my desk and picked up the paper out of my pencil box. Shit. Busted. She asked to see me in the hallway, and when she presented the incriminating evidence to me, at first I said nothing. 5th Amendment rights and all that. Then she asked again, and I broke down sobbing, admitting my heinous crime against her, and math (like I offended the science by cheating on a multiplication quiz). She told me to go sit at my desk, and she would deal with me after she graded everyone else's quizzes. I sat back down, trying to ignore the stares and whispers from everyone that knew I was in trouble (either by sheer guess, or because they had heard me wailing in the hallway). I saw Lindsey get her quiz back, and the smile on her face let me know she had passed. Um, no. Not going to happen. For reasons I'm still not quite sure I understand, I got up from my desk, marched to Mrs. Adamo, and announced in front of her and the 7-8 other people still waiting in line: "Lindsey cheated too!" Now not only was I a cheater, I was a huge bitch too.

Lindsey's parents pretty much barred us from hanging out after that because I was such a "terrible influence." They treated me like I was a one-legged cannibal covered in warts- both repulsive to look at and a moral leper. Oh well, I ended up pretty alright without her. I also had to start my Mad Math quizzes back at one, and thanks to my stellar attempt to beat the system, Mrs. Adamo instituted a class-wide policy of "nothing on the desks during quizzes." She probably secretly called it the Nikki policy. I zoomed through the quizzes even without cheating, and I still finished 3rd overall, even after having to start over. I think by the time I finished the second time, hair eater was still on 9s. I'm not sure if it was because he just didn't know math, or because he was too busy eating his own hair to be bothered by actual classwork.

Either way, I learned two things that day that are pretty good life mottos: 1) Don't cheat, and 2) don't be a huge bitch. I always follow number one, but sometimes 2 gets me when people are annoying. So, there's the lesson o' the day.