Dots

I sat back in my chair, and drowned-out the droning of the teacher. It was Fifth grade. I was bored.

I should have transferred to the smart school with Dr. Brian, Dave and the others. Instead, I stayed at the dumb school. I, therefore, found myself frequently bored, like I was on this particular day.

I stared at the ceiling and the rows of aluminum fluorescent light fixtures. I stared at the acoustic tiles, and at the random-appearing dots in those tiles.

I discovered patterns in the dots, and realized that they were not so random. They were exact, machine cut. Each tile was identical to the next. I hypothesized that by calculating the approximate sum of all dots on single tile, I could extrapolate the sum of all dots in the classroom.

I made the calculations. That was a god damn lot of dots.

At recess, I made a quick count of all the classroom-sized rooms in the school. The only odd exception was the caffatorium (cafeteria + Auditorium = Caffatorium).

I made independent calculations at lunch. Ignoring my fishsticks, I calculated the number of dots on each tile. These were larger, for some reason, than the classroom tiles. Next, I calculated for the number of tiles, making adjustments for various hallways, backrooms, and the foyer.

By the end of the day, I had calculated the sum total of all ceiling dots in the school. I took my calculations to the teacher. She told me to stop wasting time and get back to the busy work.

Free thinking was discouraged.

I've attempted to make similar calculations as an adult to determine just exactly how many bare breasts I've seen, either in print, film, online, or in person, over the course of my life.

It's a much softer math set with wildly imprecise extrapolation.

The number, however, is similar in size to the fifth grade dot calculation.

Reading for Comprehension:
1. I apologize if you attended the same dumb elementary school as me. I didn't mean to imply that you're more stupid than you really are.
2. What sort of things do you like to count?
3. My wife would like to get Joss Whedon's input on yesterday's blog topic. Does anyone have his email address?