Being Bright in a Dim World

In the fourth or fifth grade, a classmate brought it to the teacher’s attention that the product of 9×1 through 9×10 results in a number with digits that add up to 9. The teacher was so amazed that she spent several minutes explaining the phenomenon to us, praising the student who discovered it. I don’t recall exactly when I noticed the pattern myself, but I believe it was the first time I saw a times table that went up to 9. This was the first time I realized, “hey, I might be smarter than my teacher.”

I was a very well-behaved young boy, accepting teacher authority without question. My (first) run-in with illogical feminism was in 5th grade, when the teacher insisted that girls and boys are 100% equal – including equal performance in athletics. We were “forced” to integrate our lunchtime games, something we had been doing since preschool without being told. In the midst of this foray into gender equality, the teacher set up several special rules that only applied to the girls to give them an advantage.