Tale Of A 2nd Grade Delinquent

Yesterday's post was about my brain, which I still believe to be Ralph Lauren plaid instead of the usual pinky gray color. Specifically, the post was about my former existence in the Gifted and Talented program in elementary school coupled with my inability to remember to unbuckle my seat belt before trying to exit my car.

The important item to take away from that post is clearly, I'm gifted. But not in the whole 'remembering important stuff' kind of way.

Which brings me to today's post about a nugget of information about the G/T program that I forgot to tell you about yesterday.

Most of the time, I liked the G/T program. The tangrams and visual word puzzles completely knocked my socks off. But the rest of the curriculum (the mathy stuff) … I hated.

Math and I have never been friends. We've never been close enough to be considered frienemies. Math and I have always had what I describe as a classic Western relationship: when necessary, we square off in the middle of town with our hands hovering over our pistols ready to see who has the fastest draw while the theme from 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly' plays softly in the background. And only one of us makes it out alive.

Usually it's Math because I'm too busy trying to keep my imaginary new white ten gallon hat from getting dusty.

But I digress.

Most of the time, I liked being pulled out of class to be enriched. But sometimes … we did mathy stuff. After a couple of weeks of mathy stuff, I had reached my tolerance limit. I formulated a plan. A truly spectacular plan.

When it was time, I'd leave my class with the other Smarty McSmart-Smarts and head down to the G/T room. Once in the G/T room, I'd inquire as to what the plan for the day was. If I liked what we were going to be doing that day, I would stay. If I didn't like the lesson plan, I 'had to go to the bathroom'.

That's code for hiding out in the library until I saw the other smarties returning to the regular classroom.

Upon seeing them stroll down the hall, I'd return whatever book or magazine I was reading to it's proper place on the bookshelf. Then I'd casually file back in with the other kids walking into the regular classroom, acting all nonchalant and like I'd been with them the whole time instead of reading a book or (more truthfully) the latest issue of 'Dynamite' magazine in the library.

It was a slightly devious but ingenious plan that worked for a pretty long time. Then I was busted by the two teachers and my mom. Who knew they talked to each other for crying out loud? That came as a complete and utter shock to me.

The adult-type people were not amused by my antics. They called a meeting. Criminy! Has anything good ever come out of a meeting between your teachers and your mom? Sure I occasionally ditched 2nd Grade, but seriously. Why the brouhaha?

I was branded a quasi-delinquent and forced to make a decision to either be enriched all the time or not at all.

Not going to lie. It was a hard decision. That Math crap was freaking hard.

In the end the allure of tangrams and pop culture related visual word puzzles won out over my great distaste for the mathy junk and I chose to be in the G/T program all the time.

What can I say? Those visual word puzzles had some kind of sick hold over me. I'd even do Math today in order to have a crack at a new worksheet of them.

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