Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Because I am not.

I don't usually help Primo with his homework. This isn't a philosophy of mine or anything. I don't have much philosophy as a parent anymore; the longer I parent three kids, the more I see my carefully-constructed philosophies, the ones I'm really very fond of, go by the wayside. Life sends Philosophy to the chopping block.

The reason I don't usually help Primo with his homework is he usually doesn't need it. He's a self-starter, and he's really good about tackling his homework right away and finishing it all. This is one of several reasons I don't sell him to roving gypsies.

But occasionally, he encounters a problem that stumps him, and then he comes to me for assistance. Unfortunately, now that he's in fifth grade, I am finding that I can't always help because, while I am well-educated and of reasonable intelligence, I do not belong to MENSA and thus, am not qualified to do fifth grade math.

Do you have a fifth grader? Have you looked at their homework lately?

Holy mother of Euclidean geometry. It's HARD.

Last week, he came over to where i was working on my laptop and told me he needed help with math.

"Let me see it," I said, full of brio. It feels good to show off your many years of education and experience to your children, to wow them with your shocking intellect.

Within two seconds, I was having heart palpitations.

"Wow," I said, "This seems hard. But I'm sure it's easier than it looks. Let's just read it over again, nice and slow."

There are 120 students in Granville Elementary School. 66 2/3% of them volunteered to help with the collection of cans for a food drive. How many students volunteered to help?  

Step 1: Change percentage to equivalent fraction.  

You know what to do. 

"Is this last part supposed to be a joke?" I asked my son. "Or are you actually supposed to know what to do here?"

"It's not a joke, Mom," he said. I could tell I was compromising my standing as Head Homework Helper and Math Mastermind.

What got me was the fraction INSIDE the percentage. Is that even allowed? Can you even have a fraction of a percentage? I feel like such a thing will create a hole in the space time continuum. So my first piece of advice was to ignore the percentage sign. To aid in this endeavor, I crossed it out.

"What are you doing?" Primo asked.

"It's just making things too complicated so let's just get rid of it," I advised. "For now."

"You can't do that," he protested.

"Are you sure?" I asked, genuinely: "Because it would make the problem a lot easier. Let's just TRY it like that."

We tried to solve it my way, which is to say, the wrong way which totally alters the question being asked and makes it utterly impossible to arrive at the right answer, in the process robbing the student of the chance to practice the skills they have allegedly learned in school.

The problem was, we couldn't solve it my way either.

Who the hell remembers how to find a FRACTION of something?  Or a PERCENTAGE? Much less both at once!

So I did what people do nowadays to learn stuff. I googled it.

"How to find percentages"

and

"How to find a fraction"

But we still couldn't get an answer that made sense.

We moved over to scrap paper, and we started to employ wild renegade math strategies. I sporadically got VERY excited, sure that I'd cracked the whole question wide open. I felt like I was Albert freaking Einstein. In truth, I was a more like Russell Crowe at the end of A Beautiful Mind - the part where he's gone loco. My scrap paper was filled with wild mathematical equations, numbers crossed out, division symbols and parentheses and fractions being cross multiplied.

"THIS IS IT!" I yelled: "We've got it now!"

We played out my genius ideas and we got answers like 3.876.

"I think that's right," I told Primo.

"Mom," he said, "How could 3.876 be 66 2/3 % of 120? How could 3876 kids help with the food drive?"

"You're very smart," I told him. Not that my opinion counted anymore.

That was about when David came home.

"DADDY!" I yelled: "Thank God. We need you!"

He looked at the problem and the first thing he asked was why the percentage symbol was crossed out.

"I didn't like it," I said.

"Move over," he told Primo.

A half hour later, David had gotten us nowhere.

"I will write a note and tell your teacher that we don't get it," I said, "Just leave it unfinished."

"No!" my son protested, a chip off the old stubborn block. "We have to figure it out."

That was all I needed to take things to the next level.

I called my father. He was my go-to math help when I was in school and he LOVES this shit. It's been years since he was a deus ex machine for someone's pre-cal problem set and frankly, he's missed it.

And, just as I expected, Babbo saved the day. He knew just what to do and he explained it clearly. We solved the problem and the answer made sense.

Sweet victory.

Until Primo's teacher corrected his homework and we found out the answer wrong.

I still don't know how to find out 66 2/3% of 120. And honestly, I can't say I give a shit.

As for my son, well, that's what his teacher is for.

Learning the Times Tables; an inspiring tale with an obvious morale you already know but you should read this anyway because it is kind of funny.

At parent-teacher conferences, Primo's third grade teacher suggested he nail down his times tables. She had been sending home notes every week reminding parents to remind kids to practice their times tables for five to ten minutes a day and she even included a few ideas of ways to do this. I read these notes, and then I ignored them. Primo's a super smart kid, and I was sure he'd memorize his times tables just by, you know, doing math, like in class and stuff.

Shockingly, this laissez-faire, lazy-bones, nebulous plan was not wildly successful.

All I needed, though, was a direct instruction. We got home that night after PTC and I announced to Primo that we were officially nailing down our times tables. We, because I was quizzing him. Daily. For five minutes. With the flash cards that we would be making together, right then. I have been hoarding an unreasonable amount of index cards for a decade - don't know where I got them and haven't known what I'd eventually use them for, until that very moment. We sat down and did the 8s and the 7s tables, then a few days later did the 6s and the 5s, eventually the 9s and the 4s. I do not know why we did them in this order -- there is no method to my madness apart from the fact that I always had a hard time with the 7s and the 8s so I figured that was a good place to start.  We never did the 3s and the 2s because dude, those just come naturally (if you've ever wondered why I am not an educator, here is why. I would be a really shitty one.)

After we made those first few flash cards, I quizzed the kid on them and he knew . . . little to nothing.

"Primo!" I exclaimed  -- then I reminded myself not to make a big deal and to remain encouraging, which would rule out saying what I wanted to, namely "You don't know this for shit, kid!"

"Primo," I corrected my tone to upbeat and calm, "It looks like you could use some work in this area."

"Ugh, no," he groaned, "I know this stuff already."

"But its taking you" --  (here I was forced to pause again to stop myself from using words like "freaking forever") -- "its taking you longer than is efficient."

I'd show him the card, and then two minutes would pass as he computed four times eight by adding four to four to four to four to four to four to four to four. It was excruciating. I imagined him taking the SATs and asking if he could have ten more hours to finish.

I had the distinct feeling that he would never learn his times tables.

Then something amazing happened.

For two weeks, I quizzed him every day for five minutes.

Now he knows his times tables. All of them. Super fast, without thinking. He knows them backwards and forwards, inside and out. He OWNS that shit.

So, incidentally, do I. I am thinking about putting it in the Special Skills section of my resume.

I'm on an extreme high about it. Primo, he doesn't really care. I mean, he's cool with it, but he's not bugging out and getting all life-coachy, like I am. Its just, once you grow up and get used to life being complex and nuanced and ambiguous and skills being hard-to-impossible to master (like parenting, for instance) it is so refreshing, so wildly, satisfying to set out to do something and then FUCKING DO IT. Like, fully, masterfully. In two weeks.

I wish everything in life were as simple and easy as that.

Fiction is stranger than truth

My son has a very active imagination. It’s quite diverting, to be sure, but sometimes it makes it difficult to tell truth from fiction. I really think even he can’t distinguish what’s real and what’s fantasy sometimes.

Lately, I’ve been grilling him about kindergarten. I know that if you ask a child, “How was school?” they are required by law to say, “Fine.” And if you ask, “What did you do at school today,” they are likewise bound to reply, “Nothing.”

So I fire off much more specific questions.

“When you go to dance class, does your teacher make you take your shoes off or can you leave them on?”

“Only the bad kids have to take them off,” he replied, “And I am never bad so I can leave them on,”

Interesting policy, I observed.

“What kind of games do you play at “Math Games?” I asked.

“Well the teacher is Miss Meg.”

“What a perfect name! Miss Meg the Math teacher.”

“And she asked what 7 plus 7 was and I knew the answer was 14 and I won! I got to wear a crown!”

This, too, seemed unusual -- kind of weirdly and atypically competitive --and also a rather large coincidence that she would have asked the exact mathematical equation to which my son knows the answer. Ask his 7+9 or 6+6, and he wouldn’t be wearing the crown. But still, I told him I was very, very proud.

Yesterday I asked, “What did your teacher read to you at storytime?”

“A chapter book about Elvis Presley doing karate,”

“What?” I countered, “Is that true? That sounds very strange.”

“It IS true,” Primo insisted, “And Marilyn Monroe was in it too but I don’t remember what she was doing.”

That’s probably for the best, I thought to myself. I mean, I love Monroe probably more than the average Joe, but her hobbies and habits don’t make suitable reading material for children.

Since I often look for books that Primo has read in school at our local library, I asked his teacher today at drop-off: “Hey, Cathy, what’s the name of that Elvis Presley book you read to the kids?”

“The what?’ she asked.

Primo tugged on my arm hard and whispered with a mischievous grin, “No! Don’t say anything about that!”

“Oh,” I replied, “Nothing, I guess I was confused.”

“OK,” she smiled, just glad, I’m sure, that the day was over and that the last of the naggy parents and wacko kids had left the building.

Then a block later, we ran into his schoolmate Myrna, on her way home.

“Hey, Myrna,” I asked, “I’m interested in your opinion. Is Miss Meg the math teacher boring or fun?”

Primo tugged on my arm again as Myrna said, “Who?”

I glared at him and asked her, “What’s the name of your math teacher?”

“Joe,” she replied.

The funny thing is, Primo is a total straight-shooting honest Abe when it comes to everything else, He won’t even lie when he stands to gain sugary treats.

“If I give you this cookie, will you stop attacking your sister?”

“No,” he’ll say, “I won’t! But gimme the cookie anyway!”

He often uses the expression, “I cannot tell a lie . . .” to preface confessions of guilt. He is precisely like David, whereas my daughter, like me, lies just for shits and giggles.

But now, for no reason whatsoever, we’ve got tall tales galore about Kindergarten. Is the reality of it so gruesome that he has to invent a fantastical world populated with Elvis Presley and Miss Meg Mathmaster? Only time will tell.

Chanel Shenanigans etc

So, remarkable feat of mischief my daughter treated me to yesterday. In the spirit of school starting, I’ll present it to you as a problem set.

How are the following items related?

The AC/ heating unit in our brand-new apartment and

The small bottle of Chanel No. 5, given to me four years ago by my husband as a birthday gift.

Clue: The bottle is now empty.

If you guessed that my daughter poured the entire contents of the perfume bottle into the AC unit yesterday, you would be correct! Our apartment now smells like Marilyn Monroe’s boudoir.

News on the big biy front:

As David was turning out the lights at bedtime last night Primo informed him, “2 +2 = 4”

“Yes, that’s right,” said David, “And 3+1=4, too.” He went to shut the door.

But not before Primo chimed in: “That’s impossible.”

Kid goes to kindergarten, thinks he knows everything.