Monday, September 10, 2012

Twelve

First I must apologize for not posting yesterday. I completely forgot, and that's really odd for me because this has been something that I do pretty much every single day, and to forget....it felt weird.
Today, my loyal and wonderful readers, I must talk about a brief moment of stupidity I had when I was in sixth grade. This will all be clear at the end of the post, don't worry.

We were in science class, and were studying units under the guidance of a teacher I shall call Mr. J. Mr. J was well known for the amount of notes he made us write down in class. He would give us a piece of paper with all the notes written down on it, and tell us to copy it into our notebooks. The amount, looking back, seems like nothing at all, but to a sixth grader, two pages of notes in one day seems like a mountain load of work. He also was known for the generous, .1 of a point he would give as extra credit points on exams.
Well, we were sitting in class, and Mr. J. was talking about the importance of units. He was talking about how units make everything clear in science and how the unit is just as important than the actual number.
I made the wonderful mistake of zoning out while he was talking about this. Maybe it was only for a few seconds, but still, I did.
As Mr. J was finishing up his whole spiel about units clarify everything, he decided to give an example. He called on me, and said, "Aki, go get twelve."
 I looked up, and responded, "right now?"
"Yes, right now. Go get me twelve."
"Really?"
"Yes. Go ask Mrs. Jackson at the front desk for twelve." He seemed to be very annoyed at the fact that 1) his long speech about the importance of units had obviously not sinked in, and that 2) I was being this dense.
"Ok," I said, got up, left the classroom, and headed for the front desk. As I was leaving, I heard a lot of giggles coming from the room, and I wondered why.
When I arrived at the front desk, Mrs. Jackson had just finished up a phone call. She looked up, and said, "can I help you Aki?" It was a small school, so Mrs. Jackson knew everybody.
"Yeah," I said, "Mr. J would like me to ask you for twelve." She looked like the most confused person on earth.
"What?"
"He wants twelve." I was very determined to get twelve for my teacher, and do it fast.
"Twelve?"
"Yes, twelve." I was beginning to get annoyed at the fact that she wasn't just handing me twelve. She was taking a very long time. She looked at me, thought for a few seconds, then,
"Um.....ok.... well, here's a ruler." She handed me a metal ruler, which units were in inches "and here's a calendar." She handed me the school calendar. I might stress again that she looked very very confused.
"Thanks," I said, and started to walk away, but before I could, she said,
"And tell Mr. J that I have aspirin for him if he needs it."
I was starting to walk back when a girl in my class, Claire, came running up to me and said that Mr. J wanted me to come back. I nodded and told her proudly that I had acquired a ruler and a calendar.
When we got into the room, there was a lot of conversation going on. Mr. J, who looked very amused, looked at me and asked what Mrs. Jackson had given me. I gave him the ruler and the calendar and said, "She was very confused about what you were talking about." He chuckled a bit and told me to go back to my seat. He then continued his long speech about units.

Today, we were sitting in chemistry class. Dr. Horton, our teacher, announced that our topic for today would be units. She went up to the board and wrote: 12
To which I answered, "twelve what?"
I have learned my lesson.

2 comments:

  1. YESS!! This was like my favorite moment of 6th grade, and one of my favorites of St. Edmund's in general. That's legitimately hilarious that Dr. Horton used 12 as the example though. That's just so perfect.

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