11 Comments
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Rhonda  Paul's avatar

Yes.....no sense of humor on her part so I don't blame you!! haha

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John Nogowski's avatar

Yes, Rhonda...but my record was permanently scarred...hahahaha...

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Rhonda  Paul's avatar

Ha ha ha.....

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Rhonda  Paul's avatar

OK John.....you're killing me here! This story was hysterical. Your writing puts us right back there in that class, whether we were actually there or not! I don't know how I could have missed that or well, maybe I do but?? I say Thank you on behalf of the whole class for bringing any possible humor to a very painful subject for me and every math hating student that ever lived. I share your sentiment in which I am forever grateful that I also managed to get through my life without using any complicated mathematical or Napoleon theories. Amen.

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John Nogowski's avatar

hahaha...so true. Funny thing is, once a week or so, I have lunch with a group of retired teachers - one of them had a stroke a while back so it's sort of a get-him-out-of-the-house thing (he's a great guy) and they ALL were math teachers. I sent them that cartoon. Funny thing is when I got that A in College Math, I was dating a math major who'd had that same teacher and NEVER gotten an A. I guess you can imagine what happened to that relationship

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Mark Fountain's avatar

Great piece!! I never had Mr Burpee, I did however have the pleasure to have Mrs Woods. She was a wonderful teacher, (plus I had quite a crush on her!)

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Gary Young's avatar

Algebra II for 4 years. 12th grade twice. Math sucks.

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John Nogowski's avatar

Algebra came from the Middle East. Figures. The bastards...

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John Nogowski's avatar

Love for you to wander around this site. We go back, after all….

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Chuck Marquis's avatar

Burpee was named quite appropriately. Fortunately, I had Roger Simpson for Geometry. He happened to be a great basketball player in his day (I know this from articles I read and him beating my butt in the NHS Alumni game). I will say I had to Google the "Napoleonic Theorem" and decided I was absent the day Mr. Simpson covered it.

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John Nogowski's avatar

I remember him. He could shoot. I might have done OK in math IF my grade school teachers explained the shit to us. In 5th grade, we had a teacher who hated math, too. So he'd say "Do you kids want to do math or do you want to sing?" "We want to sing!!" So you can imagine my panic at Fairgrounds when they said open your book and it's modern math. Great to hear from my old QB

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