Math Is Definitely A Sport

I am not much of a sports player (seeing as every sport I play—except maybe for KanJam, which I believe I am quite an expert at because I can aim a frisbee into the tiny slot on those KanJam cans—can be described with the words, "flailing arms everywhere and horrible hand-eye coordination"), so I do not know what a real sports team is like, at least among the players themselves. I cannot claim that solving complex geometry problems is the same as scoring a goal in lacrosse (which I still have no idea how it's played, but I'll probably ask soon).

However, math is most definitely a sport in its own right. It's competitive, we have a team, and we have matches and rivals and most of all, there are different levels of competitions.

In fact, our rivals in math are pretty similar to our rivals in, say, soccer or football.

Anyway, I promised earlier that I would blog about the state math meet, and so, after much homework-tackling and procrastination, here it is, a transcript of (nearly) everything that happened.

When I handed in my permission form on Monday, Ms. Sherbert told me that we would have a dismissal at one. I went on the website that night and checked the schedule (because I only have end-of-class times memorized by the minute hand, not the hour hand), and realized that I would still technically have to go to period 5, my calc class. But everyone was going to be taking a test that I had already taken anyway, so I figured that I wouldn't need to stay. That was what I told Argon (who has half of period 5 free, lucky him) during lunch, and he agreed to come with me upstairs to see Mrs. James and tell her that I was "skipping."

We made it halfway there when we saw Micro wandering down the hall in the opposite direction.

"We have the entire period off, right?" Micro asked as we approached him.

"Well," Argon said, "our dismissal's at one, so you still have to go to period 5."

"Oh, well, I have Spanish, so I'm skipping."

For students who supposedly represented some of the "brightest of Paperclip High," as Mr. Stone said the other day before AIME (while Tybalt stood on a swivel chair trying to dismount a projector, and Mr. Stone commented on what a shame it would be if Tybalt fell off and hit his head), we sure love going to class.

Micro followed my entourage (which expanded from one person to two) upstairs as we debated the world language department. Once we got to the calc classroom, I slipped in and explained the situation to Mrs. James.

"Where is Dino?" Mrs. James asked. "You guys have half an hour. He could have squeezed in part of the test today. Oh, he's such a slacker."

Later on, as we wandered the halls some more, Argon said, "I feel kind of bad for feeling sorry for everyone who's stuck in class while we're out here."

We had just walked past the ASR room, and I suggested that we go back and say hi to Tea and Mario, but this notion was dismissed as soon as we saw Mr. Fisher.

"Hey, Mr. Fisher," said Argon, who had had him for bio last year. Mr. Fisher nodded hi to Argon and I, and then spotted Micro.

"Where were you yesterday? Were you skipping?"

"No," Micro said. "I was sick yesterday."

"Sure you were. You were skipping yesterday, and you're skipping now."

We then made our way to the library, where I spotted Irving, Tybalt, Bryant and Dino sitting at a table together. Looks like everyone (except Mario, who, according to Tea, was in ASR, and Argon, who actually had a free) decided to skip.

After half an hour of basically doing nothing (I printed out all of my US documents, but that was about it), we re-congregated at the front door, where another school was already there waiting. I could not figure out what school it was, although it may have been the high school from the town next to ours. The bus still had not arrived yet, so we loitered in the lobby.

"Dino," I said, turning to him. "Mrs. James said that you're a slacker for not taking the test today."

"Oh, yeah," Tybalt agreed. I'm not sure how he knows this information, as he was in the library for the entire time, but perhaps he has superpowers I am not aware of.

"Come on," Dino said. "Cut me some slack. I'm not going to take half the test today and then take the rest on Thursday. I have a research paper due."

"So do I," I said. "And I took mine already."

"Yeah, well, English is your first language." Right. That made a lot of sense.

"No, it's not," I said.

"Yes, it is. It's not mine."

"What do you speak then?" Bryant asked. "Robot?"

The bus came at this time, so all discussions about Dino's robot status ended. Micro headed the line to go on the bus, which was already filled with people from other schools (I spotted Treeburg's red sweatshirt), and sat down in a random row. Argon sat next to him, and I sat across from Argon. Since there wasn't enough space left for the rest of them to sit together, Mario led the rest of them towards the middle of the bus.

The bus ride itself was rather uneventful, either because I didn't sit anywhere near Mario (and his gossip central), because I sat in front of Treeburg, who were all playing Pokémon loudly for some reason, or because I had lots of work for US that I had to do and I didn't want to be too overburdened. Probably a combination of all three. I did manage to get Argon to promise that he will trim down his backpack by the end of spring break ("You'll be really surprised at the results," or so I've been told), and highlight several documents (except the one that had "centrifugal" forces, which I rejected to the bottom of the pile because centrifugal forces do not exist and is obviously false).

Ladies and gentlemen, we will be right back after I sleep for the night, finish my EOQR, my essays (note the plural) and review for my finals the commercials! Stay tuned to find out what happens next!


(A.k.a.: I am tired now and will go sleep, but I've already written half of this, so I might as well post it now and then be lazy and write the rest later.)