Thursday, July 31, 2008

Life With A Math Nerd

Every parent has experienced at least one of those moments when their child says something that makes you think what the heck is wrong with that kid. Did I do something to damage this kid's psyche so badly that she feels that these things are normal? The bizarreness of such things is multiplied logarithmically when the kid is a math nerd masquerading as a drama queen. Or is it a drama queen masquerading as a math nerd? Honestly, this really doesn't matter. The upshot is still one peculiar teenager.

Here's the proof.

NUMBER ONE
Me: You need to reset your alarm clock. It is not correct, probably because of the pwer outages last night due to the storm.
Nerd: There's nothing wrong with my clock.
Me: Yes there is. It is two hours and fifteen minutes ahead.
Nerd: I set it that way.
Me: Why?
Nerd: Because I like to do the mental math to figure out what time it really is when I wake up in the morning.

NUMBER TWO
Nerd: Will you turn the radio up?
Me: Can you really not hear it?
Nerd: Yes, I can hear it, but it is set on "4".
Me: And . . .
Nerd: It bothers me when the volume is not set to multiples of five.

NUMBER THREE
Nerd: Can I order two pancakes?
Server: They come in orders of three or five.
Nerd: But I only want two.
Me: Well then just eat two.
Nerd: I like my food to be served in twos.
Me: Like Noah's ark?
Nerd: Exactly. Forget the pancakes. How many tacos come in an order?
Server: Three.
Nerd: Can I have a turkey sandwich cut in half?
Server: Mayo or mustard?
Me: Or both?

Around here we have five animals, two kids, and a DVD player that constantly blinks 12:00. Does any of this make me responsible for the idiosyncracies of my little math nerd? I'm proud to claim her and all her weird numeric eccentricities.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Somewhere in the 5 animals and 2 kids, is the implication that we are going to listed to animals and be served kids for dinner--Bar-B-Q child?

Anonymous said...

If the other comment to this post makes sense to anyone, please tell the rest of us. Perhaps it is just really bad grammar. "going to listed to animals"? Someone is blinking 12:00 or needs a writing lesson.