Here's Joohhnny!!

Eddie,

I was reading you blog the other day and I read about Ms Nell V. and how you impressed her with you math addition. I also enjoyed reading about the jokes that were played on her. It was fun reading.

I was kind of like you in high school with the don’t give a shit attitude and the non-conformist look on things. It was more fun to raise hell and drink beer on the weekends than to study. (It must run in the family). I also have several stories about Ms V., one that I would like to share with you. In fact I think you should start a collection of local Marietta High School tales of students like us and put them on your blog. It makes for good old hell raisen fun stories.

My senior year I had Ms V. for advanced algebra and trig. In the spring before graduation, I have forgotten what problems we were working on, but as usual one day I did not do my homework. Ms V. always got into a rage if someone did not do their homework. I could tell by her body language that she was really pist-off with me when she found out that I did not turn in my homework. She went into this long tirade about what we were going to do after we graduate and that we would be garbage men, or some other low life job. She then asked me why I didn’t do my homework. I said “Ms V. these problems are boring. I worked a couple of them and they are all just alike and once you work one you can work them all. (There were about 40 problems on this one page and we were assigned all of them). I just thought I was wasting my time.” She said, “Young man if you are so smart go to the black board.” She loved sending students to the blackboard to embarrass them in front of the whole class. So I strolled up to the board and she assigned one of the harder problems and told me to work it out on the black board.

I wrote the problem down. As I was writing the problem down I said to myself that I was in way over my head and how in hell was I going to get out of this one. I’ll just pretend I know what I’m doing and try to break down the problem as if I were Ms V., and stand up here and work the problem. I wrote and erased, and wrote and thought and erased some more, and worked some more. I tried to drag it out as long as I could. Then Ms V. said “Now Mr. Hunter explain as you go, and tell the others what you are doing.” I said to my self “O shit here goes”. I started explaining the problem the best I knew how. She then said, “Mr. Hunter that is correct.” I just about fainted. Somebody up there likes me. Ms V. said “Mr. Hunter I want to apologize to you. You do know what you are doing. From here on out for the rest of the year you do not have to turn in any homework as long as you keep up and understand what we are doing.”

I don’t know to this day, 43 years later, how in the hell I got it right. All I know is I got my C in advanced algebra and trig. And I did not do any homework for the rest of the year. And in May of ’65 I graduated from high school. I still have not used that kind of math crap since.

Cousin Johnny