I'm NOT Smarter Than A 5th Grader
A while back I decided to be handy around the house and build a new screen to the bedroom window.
It was broken when Tsuki our, cute as shit but never quits, kitten decided to take her white fluffy butt climbing up the mesh, which fell out of the window and onto the ground below in a heap of frightened kitten and frame and ripped screen.
Simple enough, I replaced that same screen last summer. Although not every well, I guess, or it probably wouldn’t have fallen out with Tsuki so easily. Nevertheless, I know what to do this time.
So I had my kit from Home Depot and I had my measurements. I was armed and ready to take on this mission. So I consulted the instructions to find out how much to subtract from the measurements I had taken with oh-so-much-care to allow for the hardware on either side of the frame pieces.
The instructions looked simple enough:
"Take height and width measurements inside the channel and subtract 11⁄2 inches on each frame piece, to allow for corner inserts."
I'll just subtract 11⁄2 from the two measurements I took. That's 391⁄16 - 1 1⁄2 and 373⁄4 - 1 1⁄2.
Right… compound fractions… subtraction… yeah…umm…well you… uhhh…
Common Denominator!! That’s the ticket. That good ole’ com-mon de-nomi-nat-or.
You get that common denominator and then…you…uh…multi-divide the…umm…
Frak !!
Half an hour later the table was covered in paper with calculations scribbled on each sheet. It looked like I was trying to work out how the flux capacitor fit in with the time travel theory I had just cooked up after hitting my head on the toilet.
Math was never my best subject, still I know at one point, heck most points, in my life I could add and subtract fractions. I had a full on, grade A, brain fart going on. And the worst part I was going to have to wait on my wife, the school teacher, to get home to do this for me.
There was two things about this idea that made it upacceptable: (1) I would have to ask her to do a 5th grade math problem and (2) The ammunition I was going to be giving her would be tantamount to handing the blue prints for the Death Star to Al-Queda. The end would never be heard.
Think man think.
YouTube!! Surely some math freak out there has posted a video explaining how to subtract fractions.
You know, this is getting a little long so I’ll spare you the details of the YouTube thing. Four different answers to each equation later told me I’d just wait until she got home.
So as she sat there, working out each problem, smirking and glancing in my direction. I cast my eyes downward in shame and it was then I looked at the tape measure and the ruler laying on the table and now the idea hit me. Take the ruler, go to the 391⁄16 mark on the tape measure. Count back one and a half inches and get the answer your wife just got when she did the 5th grade math you couldn't do. The answer was with me all along.
Only if you use the ruler in conjunction with the tape measure you don’t get the infuriating grin.
It was broken when Tsuki our, cute as shit but never quits, kitten decided to take her white fluffy butt climbing up the mesh, which fell out of the window and onto the ground below in a heap of frightened kitten and frame and ripped screen.
Simple enough, I replaced that same screen last summer. Although not every well, I guess, or it probably wouldn’t have fallen out with Tsuki so easily. Nevertheless, I know what to do this time.
So I had my kit from Home Depot and I had my measurements. I was armed and ready to take on this mission. So I consulted the instructions to find out how much to subtract from the measurements I had taken with oh-so-much-care to allow for the hardware on either side of the frame pieces.
The instructions looked simple enough:
"Take height and width measurements inside the channel and subtract 11⁄2 inches on each frame piece, to allow for corner inserts."
I'll just subtract 11⁄2 from the two measurements I took. That's 391⁄16 - 1 1⁄2 and 373⁄4 - 1 1⁄2.
Right… compound fractions… subtraction… yeah…umm…well you… uhhh…
Common Denominator!! That’s the ticket. That good ole’ com-mon de-nomi-nat-or.
You get that common denominator and then…you…uh…multi-divide the…umm…
Frak !!
Half an hour later the table was covered in paper with calculations scribbled on each sheet. It looked like I was trying to work out how the flux capacitor fit in with the time travel theory I had just cooked up after hitting my head on the toilet.
Math was never my best subject, still I know at one point, heck most points, in my life I could add and subtract fractions. I had a full on, grade A, brain fart going on. And the worst part I was going to have to wait on my wife, the school teacher, to get home to do this for me.
There was two things about this idea that made it upacceptable: (1) I would have to ask her to do a 5th grade math problem and (2) The ammunition I was going to be giving her would be tantamount to handing the blue prints for the Death Star to Al-Queda. The end would never be heard.
Think man think.
YouTube!! Surely some math freak out there has posted a video explaining how to subtract fractions.
You know, this is getting a little long so I’ll spare you the details of the YouTube thing. Four different answers to each equation later told me I’d just wait until she got home.
So as she sat there, working out each problem, smirking and glancing in my direction. I cast my eyes downward in shame and it was then I looked at the tape measure and the ruler laying on the table and now the idea hit me. Take the ruler, go to the 391⁄16 mark on the tape measure. Count back one and a half inches and get the answer your wife just got when she did the 5th grade math you couldn't do. The answer was with me all along.
Only if you use the ruler in conjunction with the tape measure you don’t get the infuriating grin.