Sunday, January 15, 2012

Riding in Cars

My sister, who's first name starts with an "L," and will hereto for be referred upon as "Elle,", recently acquired a car from my parents at the porn store. Last night she and I were out  knocking over trash cans running errands with a couple of the kids and stopped by the gas station to fill up before continuing on to do evil good.

Elle got out to pump the gas while I entertained the three girls by turning up the radio and going through Elle's glove box. Sometimes she accuses me of having zero awareness of personal space, so I like to go through her stuff when she's not around so that I don't make her feel uncomfortable.

I was almost done when she flung the door open and let in the stink of gasoline fumes and the thirty below cold weather. I wasn't about to stop because I like to see things through to the end, so I kept digging while she shoved a receipt in my face.

Elle: Let's see how badly Ma1/2E failed us. I want to know what kind of gas mileage my car gets.

Note: Our high school math teacher, Mr. Mahaffey, did in fact turn his name into a fraction. That was only one level of weird that we experienced.

Me: Do not speak to me of math. [slams glove box] You disappoint me.

Elle: [ignoring me] Seriously. If my tank holds 11.9 gallons and I just put in 4.9 gallons... That means... Okay, what's 11.9 minus 4.9? Ok, so I used 7 gallons, right?

Me: [looking through her middle seat compartment] And if the square root of 7 is 21... do you have any gum in here?

Elle: In my purse. And at $3.29 a gallon, times 7 gallons- Right?

Me: [peering out my window at the gas pump] You pumped 4.9 gallons. Which means you could not have possibly used 7 gallons.  How many miles did you drive again?

Elle: 120. Do you have a calculator? Does that guy? [points at station attendant picking at his ear] Ew.

[we both sit for a while puzzling this out, brain waves sparking and smoking]


Me: Oh! Miles divided by gallons. It's 120 divided by 5. What is that? 30?


Elle: Awmygawd. This means I really did bust my butt for a D- in high school math.

Me: I'm so blogging about this.


Note: In case one of you had a math teacher that actually taught you something, you'd know what we now know: 120 divided by 5 is more like 24, not 30.


3 comments:

Garrett Oneto said...

Awesome.

landafield said...

As a math teacher, weird is a complement. Student (only been in my class 2 weeks) to me on Friday "ms. Teacher, a normal teacher would not do that." Me "are you saying I'm not normal?" Student "yes." Me. "Thanks!" Beeming from ear to ear.

Unknown said...

Landafield, you math teachers are all the same!