Math for the math disabled

I still remember my sophomore math teacher, Mrs. Fromm, intercepting one question asked most every day during her algebra and geometry classes.
"Why do we need to know this? When are we ever going to use this after high school?"
Her answer was usually "Shut up and do it!"
No, not really. Mrs. Fromm was much to sweet to say that out loud to the children who would one day be running her nursing home.
But that was about 25 years ago (see how I used the skills of math that I learned from her). Now I can tell you exactly why we X-generationers needed to learn algebra and geometry.
1. Our computers were overpriced and horribly complicated at the time. There was no way they could do algebra for us, unless we were able to get a computer science degree, which Kellogg Community College did not likely offer in 1989. Even if it was offered, college level math courses would certainly have been a prerequisite for the advanced-level computer classes where you would learn to program computers to do algebra for you. Kind of a moot point by then.
2. We all wanted to go to college to get degrees because we were told any degree would help us land jobs in the bustling 1990s. So we needed those math credits in order to get into good schools for important liberal arts degrees.
3. And this is the big one. Twenty-five years down the road, we would be trying to home-school our own children (something only the fringe denim-jumper-wearing mothers did in 1989, but in the age of Common Core and crappy school lunches -- is a growing movement. Those math skills would be vital when trying to teach our kids to balance checkbooks (a real-world math problem from antiquity), and measure the volume of their bedroom.
And so I began homeschooling my two daughters this week... in math.
I struggled with math throughout school and so avoided it when possible. I did the bare minimum and didn't mind getting some wrong answers on tests if it meant I could turn worksheets or tests in a few minutes earlier.
Now, this same level of care and attention to detail is being visited on me by one of my own children. She recently suggested that, if farmers would give their food to grocery stores, and the stores would give it to us, then we wouldn't need money and wouldn't need to know how to make change. Therefore she wouldn't need to learn about decimals. See, my daughter is willing to become a socialist; to take on the same economy as North Korea, along with it's starving populace, just so she won't have to study math. Brutal psychotic dictators who think nothing of killing you and sending your family to a gulag? No problem, just don't make her learn long division.

The captain's missing WD writing prompt

"The ocean is a vast and beautiful thing. Taking a quick peak off the side of your boat you realize something strange. The tentacles slowly creeping up the hull aren’t your imagination and the captain’s nowhere to be found."

I do not believe those tentacles creeping up the side of the ship are in my imagination, but that bottle I I bought from the carpenter's apprentice an hour ago was not rum and it is proving difficult to tell what is real and what is my imagination. I am certain that my current state of mind contributed to the reasoning the crew had for binding me to the foremast and possibly why the captain is nowhere to be seen. I tried to yell to the nearby boatswain, to find as to why I was tied up and to determine if he was aware what was on the other end of the tentacle, but the crew apparently gagged me too. How could this happen? We were three days out from San Juan and, as navigator, they would need me to steer a course through the nearby reefs. I apparently blacked out, as I was nude. My wrists and ankles were tied tightly. As I struggled against the ropes, I watched a purple tentacle the size of my arm wrap around a stanchion near the port longboat, I saw a cooper who was looking over the side at what was below. His face blanched whiter than his neckcloth. Before he could give the alarm, a purple tentacle wrapped around his belly and pulled him over the side without a sound. I jerked at the bonds with new fervor and eventually loosened them enough to pull out my left hand. I tried to retrieve my rigging knife, but grabbed the skin of my thigh, as the knife was still in the pocket of my breeches which were Neptune-only-knows where. Whatever was in the rum bottle must have worked its way through my bowles, because, as I pushed my left hand down through the bindings to loosen the lines around my ankles, I felt a sudden need to relieve myself. I freed the bonds and began working on the knot at my wrist. The tentacle on the port side, was soon joined by another on the starbord, but I was only vaguely aware of the monster below, as my guts turned in my belly and I felt an impending explosion was iminent. The boat slowed to jib and the monster seemed to get a better grasp. I heard a creaking as the muscles of the creature gripped the hull. The brigantine would certainly be crushed within seconds, but all my mortal brain could concern itself with, was removing the final rope from my wrist and freeing myself of the poison within my innards. My fingers bled from the exercions, but I was able to free my right hand from the lashings. Thankful now for my nudity, I dashed to the starboard gunnel and thrust my bottom side over the rail. Before bowing over to release my bowels, I had the briefest of glimpses of a purple-grey being with black eyes and an orange beak the size of a man. I had little time to think of my impending fate. As I heard a low growl that grew into a roar, my bowels released their contents down toward the monster. Doubled over with the effort, a second waive of spasms gripped my intestines and an inhuman smell, either from the monster or from my own expulsions, wafted from below. With the relief from my body's discharge, I felt the sudden, paralyzing fear that I was about to be devoured by a sea monster while hanging -- naked -- over the edge of the vessel on which I was third ranking officer. As I cringed and waited to be dragged down into the depths by the beast, there was nothing to hear but the lapping of the sea against the hull. Standing up straight, I looked over the perch I had just inhabited to see nothing but blue water stained black by either my waste, or the monster's inky discharge. After retrieving a set of breeches and a shirt from my locker, I entered our position in the log, along with the information required to have the carpenter's apprentice flogged and report the loss of our cooper who jumped ship near San Juan.

The drawing club

I was inducted into a secret club today.

The drawing club has six members since Kristen was inducted. Her and I are the only members without a board position. Kayla is president, Grace is secretary, Benjamin is sergeant at arms. I don't recall Jack's position. The meeting was conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order. President Kayla had a podium with a gavel. The other members sat in a row in front of her asking permission to speak. I don't know where they picked this up from, but it was very cute. 

Begin

Where to begin. It was Beatrice’s first day on the job. I remember because she poured a vat of mayo into the dispenser and wound up getting a half gallon or more on the floor. Nothing will turn rancid faster than mayo on the greasy floor of a Whopper World franchise in East Harlem in August. The smell was stiff in the air, like a magazine that keeps cutting into your finger. It was inescapable and made Erwin go home early after dry heaving a second time. Erwin was probably their inside man. So when he wasn’t there, the robbery took a turn for the worse. The two guys probably didn’t even smell the mayo. They came in the front door, one holding a shotgun, the other some kind of kitchen knife. They yelled something through their ski masks. All I could make out was some swear words. That is the last thing I remember before waking up in the hospital bed with a hole in my cheek and a police officer’s handcuffs securing my left wrist to the bedrail.