Forums

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by str8outavannuys
I thought of this story this morning, had an internal chuckle, and decided to share.

In 8th grade, Toronto had a city-wide math contest for public school 8th graders, Mind over Math. I fancied myself pretty good at math, as did a friend of mine in my class, Matthew Thompson. So we made a bet over who would do better. It was probably $5.

Well, we had the test, and we'd both thought we did pretty well.

A few weeks later, during one of the school's interminable assemblies, they start giving out awards for kids who'd placed in the top 10% of this Mind Over Math thingy. I didn't get called, neither did Matthew Thompson. Total idiots were going up to the stage, but not us. We look at each other.

Then the principal says, "But that's not all. We had the top two finishers in the entire city. They both got 23 questions right, and one question wrong. They were separated by only one question -- where one of them answered it wrong, and the other one chose not to answer. In second place, str8, and in first place, Matthew Thompson. Come on up and get your awards."

I think that was the first bet I ever made. I still can't believe I chose the one guy to bet against in the entire city who beat me.

but the test was in metric system, right? BFD.