Skip to main content

TIFU by beating my kindergarten academic rival

This obviously happened a long time ago (lol), but I thought it seemed like a good story. When I was in kindergarten (I was 5 or 6), I had an academic rival. We were both the oldest in our class and the most advanced, as we were the only ones who knew how to read (simple) books and add/subtract large numbers.

One day, he told me he knew his 2 times tables, and bet I didn't know what that was. I had never heard of this concept before, but I pretended like I did anyway. He asked me what 2x2 was, and I guessed 4. He was annoyed that I got it right, then asked me what 2x3 was. I guessed 5, and he shouted that I was wrong. I didn't believe him, so I asked our teacher. She confirmed that he was right, then gushed and praised him for being so smart.

I remembered getting extremely jealous of all the attention he was getting. I wanted to be praised for being smart too! So naturally, I went home and forced my mom to teach me ALL the multiplication tables 1-10. Once I memorized them all, I (very brattily) asked my rival what 8x7 (or something like that) was. When he didn't know, I rubbed it in his face and proudly recited my tables to my teacher, expecting high praises.

Well, my teacher was so impressed that she paraded me around the elementary school. She got me to help "teach" a 3rd-grade class and gave me extra multiplication and division homework to take home every week. As for my mom, she was so scared I would forget them that she made me recite ALL of my multiplication tables before I was able to do anything fun, convinced my teacher to give me a thick stack of arithmetic problems for me to do in the summer, and had me skip a grade, resulting in me never getting to see my kindergarten friends again :D

TL;DR: I took the chance to show off against my kindergarten academic rival, but did it so well I suffered for the rest of the year and summer.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TIFU - Don’t do what I did

On Sunday morning Aug. 24th, I awoke to discover a large blind spot in my right eye, which turned out to be what is called wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It has resulted in a very significant, permanent loss of vision in that eye. Although I maintain good peripheral vision, whatever I focus on at best is very blurry, and mostly disappears. I can barely make out the large E at the top of the eye chart. If this happens to my left eye I’ll be unable to read or drive. It turns out that I missed the opportunity that I had to prevent this from becoming a serious problem because I failed to report what appeared to be minor changes in my vision. In the weeks prior to August I had noticed that what I knew to be straight lines appeared to my right eye to have a little waviness. I also noticed that the color of my front lawn, which I could see through the window from my recliner,  was subdued, looked almost gray, in my right eye. So I scheduled an eye exam, which revealed the p...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by getting suspended for 2 days by my front office in school.

I (13M) am an African American student at Jeannette junior high who had got suspended for 2 days here. I was in math class minding my business until my teacher had told me to go to the main office, which posed no problem to me. As i went down there, the people of the front office had stopped me and made me get a new ID (yes, we have id's.) so i had asked them if i could maybe do a different alternative and call my mother to let her bring the Id here, even then, the Id isn't that important. So, although i was talking to them in a calm manner and not showing any signs of rebellion, they had threatened to call the police on me without thinking twice before calling my parents. This is where i started getting angry, and even then now the black peers agree that could have been a racially motivated action. They then told me to sit in the office conference room because of that, leading into more anger. They had then called my mother who had came over to the school didn't even let ...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by putting my already skinny jeans in the dryer on high heat.

TL;DR: Was stupid and didn't realize I put my clothes on extra high heat in the dryer. Had to rock skintight skinny jeans all day with tighty whities (only clean pair I had since I procrastinate doing laundry like crazy). I guess the constant wedgies and squishing are punishment for my stupidity. Honestly don’t know who else to blame but myself for this. I’m a scatterbrained guy so I literally put the highest setting on a load with most of my clothes, and my skinny jeans that I was planning to wear today. You can probably already see where this is going, but somehow I didn’t. For context, these jeans were already pushing the limits of what could reasonably be called wearable. They fit, technically, but only in the sense that I could get them on with enough determination and a bit of strategic breathing. Sitting down in them was more of a commitment than a casual action. Still, they looked good, and I had convinced myself that discomfort was just part of the aesthetic. So this m...
Post a Comment
Read more