Thanks, Dana!

In math writing, the accepted way to phrase things is "we." "We know that A is true, and therefore Lemma 3 indicates that B is true." "We can see that x=y." And so on. It took me a long while to get used to that.

That "be clever" instruction would have sent me into hyperventilation in seventh grade. Especially if I didn't have a good sense of the teacher's sense of humor yet -- at that age, there were plenty of things that I thought were funny that other people just didn't get, and I hadn't yet figured out how to decide what were references that everyone would understand and what weren't, and I just knew that I was not good at being clever. And being clever while taking a test would just not happen.

Hil's post immediately reminded me of a sixth-grade assignment that was so mind-bogglingly hard, that I was so inapt for, that 1, I still remember it to this day, and 2, I'm kind of mad that I had to do this. As part of some kind of NASA-sponsored project, we had to design a space station.

I mean, WTF? I know every boy in class had a marshmallow space station with eleven prow-lasers already in their mind, but I was TWELVE. I know fuck-all about drawing, let alone space stations. I still remember the frustration of trying to figure out what you could need in a space station. At TWELVE. I couldn't do it NOW. And it was a competition. And we had to work in groups. STILL MAD.

Bon, you can be in my group. I loved that shit.

Signed,

Once upon a time, drew up designs with my next door neighbor for an egg shaped one person car that stored all your music, could provide directions, had voice activated calling, tv on demand that you plugged in at night to recharge.

I found that notebook last time I was at my folks. Cracked me up. Man, if only... Little did I know we'd have bluetooth and garmons and dvd players and ipods and the internet (though I think at that point, my dad had email) and smart cars and...

Ah technology...I was just facebook chatting with my sister, who was on the phone with my mother,relaying messages back and forth to my mom.

Someone offered me free tickets to a taping of SNL tonight...I wonder if they relize it's Thursday.

My "no, you need to set parameters beforehand" horror story was the spelling test I failed because of insufficiently delineated loops on my ks. I never spelt a word wrong all year, but it's why I didn't come first in class. Of course this was the psycho bitch that threw things at me for reading ahead of the class, so there was no winning with her. And my parents didn't care a bit about any of my complaints, and to this day are still a bit "Whuhuh?" about the whole thing, despite having learnt she was let go from her former position as headmistress for being too hard on kids.

And Opera's spellchecker can bite me. I like spelt and learnt just fine.

Ooh. I could not have survived a teacher that didn't want me to read ahead. I read ahead in every class I ever took. Come on, some of that stuff was interesting!

I was a "set parameters beforehand" kid too, though, most definitely.

Come on, some of that stuff was interesting!

You'd think it would be a vote of confidence!

My next class teacher was absolutely wonderful and brought in books from her home for me to read when she saw me getting bored and was my favourite prep school teacher evah, so that salved my wounds.

I will always love LaJune Smith in third grade. She figured out I was bored with the math, so started throwing me harder stuff (fractions? Long division? I don't quite recall) on the side, and eventually just had me doing that exclusively, even though the testing wouldn't let me get bumped up to 4th grade for math. HAD to be extra work for her. She also warned my 4th grade teacher, and she kept me up a level off the books, too.

Neat thing is she's still in district, though part time. She's got to be near 80 now. She seemed old to me back then, but was probably just late 40s. She was very 1950s grandmotherly looking. Mom still runs into her, and she always asks about me, which tickles me to death.

When I was in fifth grade another kid and I got to be in our own advanced math thingie. But the next year there was no advanced math and we were with the rest of the class. That bugged the hell out of me - why let me go ahead if only to put me back with everyone else?