The Hustler’s MBA

While I have the poker skills of a baked potato, I’m finding it hard to disagree with much of anything in Tynan’s post about the alternatives to a formal college education.

42.

I didn’t become a math and science nerd until later in life, which means my early attempts at grokking multiplication tables were laughable.

In third grade, Mr. Turnquist – easily the best teacher I had in all of my elementary school years – began drilling the “times tables” into us, thinking that our third-grade brains could stop thinking about Star Wars and robots and noises you can make with your armpit long enough to learn what one number times another number equaled.  He was crazy.  But I will admit it was a bit disturbing when most of the other kids seemed to easily pick up this arcane, useless art, but every time I began to think about this, I drew R2-D2 on my desk and everything got better.

After a while, Mr. Turnquist assumed every one of us idiots knew the times tables.  He began throwing out colloquial equations in daily lessons, which most kids responded to with a nod and a smile.  I, on the other hand, thought the equals sign looked like two laser beams.  I was OK with this.  I even heard little pt-choos in my head.

Until The Day.

Mr. Turnquist was in the throes of one of his lectures again about numbers and math and how it somehow applied to the real world, when he began to congratulate us on how well we learned our multiplication tables.  He said he noticed it had become automatic for us, that we didn’t have to think very long before providing an answer to just about any basic problem.  This conversation was largely ignored by me and a few Star Wars nerd friends, when suddenly I heard Mr. Turnquist end a sentence in the worst way possible:

“…and it’s really become easy for you guys.”  He paused and directed his voice directly at me.  “Quick, what’s six times seven?”

I looked up from my drawing, which depicted Darth Vader squatting and/or sitting on Luke Skywalker, to see Mr. Turnquist standing at my desk towering over me.  He knew I was messing around and I was stone-cold busted.  Nevertheless, drawing on some ethereal sense of calm, I maintained a cool, collected face, even though my brain instantly and completely forgot every single bit of everything it knew.  I could barely blink without conscious effort.

The entire class stared at me.  Darth Vader looked up at me from my drawing like, “Well, dumbass?”  Even Luke looked nervous, and he was already being sat upon.

Of everything that was going through my head at that time – numbers, colors, spinny triangles, TIE fighters, soccer balls, farty noises, cucumbers and pizza – my mind decided to spit out one thing, and one thing only.

“42,” I said cooly.

Mr. Turnquist moved on without a hitch. “See?  That’s what I mean, everyone. Multiplication has become automatic for everyone in this class, and that’s great to see.”

Back at my desk I resumed breathing and had the dim realization that I would never win the lottery, because I had just used up every bit of luck I would ever have in life.  I could have just as easily said, “5,688” but somehow I spit out a completely random number that just so happened to be the answer to the multiplication problem that I barely heard and certainly didn’t know.

Think about that. Given the infinite scale of numbers, I picked the one that happened to answer a basic arithmetic question.  It’s no mystery why today I never win free golf clubs, and imagine my thrill reading Douglas Adams for the first time.

Goosebumps, bitches.  Goosebumps.