My school grades one through
eight were spent in a parochial institution of learning for wise guys. Sure there were girls that attended classes
with us, but they, too, were equally guilty of driving the teaching nuns crazy.
Back then we didn’t learn about
having abortions or protesting civil matters or demanding action for climate
change. Rather, we studied such inane
things as geography, history, arithmetic, foreign languages, art, and English.
We were expected to excel at all of
these disciplines with the addition of homework that needed to be addressed at
home, hence the name. The main reason
for this was to see how much our parents knew, and whether or not they would
help us with these extracurricular assignments.
Two different times required me
asking my parents for help; one was for my Polish class, the other was for my
arithmetic class.
Since both my parents and
grandparents spoke fluent Polish, their help was certainly instrumental in
getting a good grade in that class.
It was during my arithmetic
class, however, that nerves and familial ties were threatened.
My Dad was a machinist, by trade,
who used fractions every day, all day.
My Mom was a housewife who excelled at taking care of the family, but
didn’t need to know much about math except for making change and during
cooking.
One day, I remember coming home
from school with what I, in the third grade, remember like I remember the
thorough disciplinary beatings I received from my Dad.
We were trying to get though something
called “fractions.”
It seems as though fractions are
a way to test the cohesiveness of families, and secretly conduct a
comprehensive analysis of the intelligence of a student’s immediate relatives.
After nearly sixty-years, I still
recall that day just as if it was hours old.
Sister Agnes began drawing a circle on the blackboard. As an
aside, a blackboard was what us old relics wrote on before whiteboards were
invented.
Sister Agnes made that circle
nearly perfect before drawing a line straight down the middle; the class
carefully duplicated her every move.
She turned toward the class and
told us that each side was one-half. She
then turned away to secretly take a sip from what appeared to be a silver hip
flask similar to that of my Grandpapa.
More lines were drawn and more
sips were taken. And with each line, the
class became more baffled, to the point where we all needed a sip from that
flask.
My crude circle with lines made
its way home with me. When my Dad
finished his dinner, he asked how school was, and then asked the question for
which he was sorry the rest of his life.
“Do you have any homework?”
After a few tears of failure
streamed from my eyes, I produced the papers upon which the infamous circles
and lines were scribbled. “Fractions,” I
whispered.
My Dad didn’t have much in the
way of patience, so I knew this was going to be tough.
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| Making kids bald after many years |
He produced fresh paper and a
pencil and began with the circles again.
Again. And again.
He kept drawing circles and
lines. And each circle got larger, as if
it would be easier for me to comprehend it if they were more visible.
It didn’t take long before he ran
out of both paper and patience.
My tears reappeared and my Dad
became more contemplative.
After a break, he returned with
scissors and more paper and a magic marker.
The paper became a pie. He
snipped long the lines, and eventually we had ourselves a pie with numerous
slices.
As he reassembled the paper pie,
the varying slices made more sense as ¼, ½, ¾, and one whole pie.
He even taught me how turn ¼ into
0.25 – fractions into decimals. After
all, that was his job as a machinist.
Success, at last! But then I was mistaken because my Dad didn’t
let me have a sip from his silver hip flask.
Alas.
