I’m flunking the second grade. Actually, I’m flunking
second-grade homework.,
I’m flunking the second grade. Actually, I’m flunking second-grade homework.
You see, one of the things that nobody tells you before you have kids is that once you hold your baby in your arms, sing your first lullaby and gag over the first diaper, you get really, really stupid.
Your brain turns to mush immediately, and by the time your firstborn is learning to walk – well, there’s just nothing left. The space where your brain used to be is cluttered with play dates, toilet training strategies and feeding schedules. There’s no room for actual intelligence in there.
And that’s why I’m flunking second-grade homework.
Oh, I don’t stink at all the homework, of course. I don’t want to brag, but I can spell most of the words on Junior’s spelling list without using my spell checker. I can even spell “quiet” and “quite” without messing up. But the math is killing me. Once I run out of fingers and toes to count on, I’m pretty much useless.
So I should have known that the math would be a problem. But I was lulled into a false sense of security – first-grade math was a breeze. OK, so Junior was pretty good at math in the first grade, and he didn’t need much assistance from me.
But this year, at Back to School Night, Junior’s teacher explained that the children were learning something called base numbers. And she wasn’t talking about baseball bases either. At least, I don’t think she was. The truth is, I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about.
At that point, I should have been worried. I should have brushed up on my second-grade math. I mean, I must have known this stuff once, right? I did pass the second grade – and I even have the report card to prove it. Right there in the math row it says “above average.” See? I did know this math stuff – once upon a time.
But now it’s gone. Like all the other things I learned in school – algebra, sentence diagrams and how to eat greasy junk food from the cafeteria without getting sick – it’s gone. Poof. Out of my head. I don’t know where it went – or even what, if anything, replaced all this knowledge. I only know that second-grade math is a mystery for me.
So last week when Junior brought home a paper that asked him to identify something called “ordinal numbers,” I panicked. I called Harry. I figured that if anyone would know what ordinal numbers were, it would be Harry. I mean, he’s a nerdy engineer. And he can actually solve math problems without using body parts or a calculator.
Once he explained ordinal numbers, I was fine. Well, truthfully, I still didn’t get it – but Junior did and that’s what matters the most. And then last night it happened. Last night Junior brought home the mother of all math homework. It was horrifying. It was scary.
And I made him do it wrong.
I won’t bore you with the details, mainly because I still don’t understand what the math was supposed to be. But I made Junior color an entire grid of numbers wrong – and the worst part is, he protested and he was right. So I spent an afternoon scraping color-crayoned mess off his math paper with my fingernail. And I learned some very valuable lessons.
1) Never scrape red crayon off a paper right after a manicure; 2) leave the math homework help to Harry; and 3) listen to Junior – the little squirt is usually right.,
