The Adventures of Pascal
By: Christina Arvotti
EDIT 615 Language Arts and Technology
Once upon a time, in a land filled with numbers, there lived a boy named Pascal (that's me). Pascal was never enamoured with numbers and quite frankly hated Math. In class on Monday Pascal's teacher, Mrs. Euclid said, "Almost everything around you can be looked at as a Math problem ." For the rest of my days to come I ran into plenty of problems.
Suddenly it's morning as I hear the sweet tunes from my iPod pulsing me awake. I look over to read it is 6:55. It takes me 10 minutes to shower, 2 minutes to brush my teeth, 3 minutes to get dressed, 15 minutes to eat my breakfast, and 10 minutes to finish my homework. Right at this moment, I start to sweat: (1) If my bus leaves at 7:40 am I going to make it? (2) How many minutes are even in 1 hour? I can already tell this day is going to be bad news.
I open the cabinet that contains all the cereal and I see two shelves with 5 boxes each. Before I get a headache I extract the box of Fruit Loops hoping some sugar will snap me out of this funk . I pour the cereal in my bowl and find my eyes getting glazed over as my mind starts racing trying to count the number of yellow pieces, green pieces, oh man this is too much! I don't even bother taking the milk out of the refrigerator because it is obvious I have developed a MATH PLAGUE. Everything around me now becomes a Math problem, I'm toast.
My morning at school didn't get much better. As I'm sitting in class day dreaming about Recess it occurs to me that today we have to change our seats. There are 20 kids in my class. Currently we sit in 5 rows of 4 desks in each row. What if Mrs. Euclid rearrages the desks to make 2 rows? 4 rows? 10 rows? Do I still get a window seat after all this? I count my classmates by 4s, still 20 kids. I wonder how many fingers are in our class? How many eyes watch Mrs. Euclid? I'm about to have an aneurysm from all these calculations , but I am saved by the lunch bell.
I walk into the lunchroom only to be enlightened that lunch today is pizza and oreo cookie pie. Will the MATH PLAGUE just never leave me alone? The pizza pie is cut into 8 equal slices and the oreo cookie pie is cut into 6 equal slices. Looks like I'm ordering my lunch in FRACTIONS! HELP! How do I order 2 slices of pizza? What is another way of asking for half of the oreo cookie pie? Which half of pie will I enjoy more? I feel like this day is never going to end, but at least I'm running on a full stomach now.
I head off to Phys. Ed. with my classmates hoping for some relief from Math and the morning of never ending operations . I lace up my basketball sneakers ready to play when Mr. Anthony blindsides us with a sports problem. If Kobe made 18 out of his 24 shots from the field last night, what was his shooting percentage? Is that percentage better or worse than .500? Is Kobe's lifetime average from the field > the average player? I am about to slam dunk my brain through the hoop when Mrs. Euclid returns to take us back to our classroom.
As we are packing up Mrs. Euclid tells us the time now is 1:40pm. Before we are allowed to be dismissed we have to complete 25 minutes of DEAR time and pack up our things. If it takes me 8 minutes to pack up and the school bell rings at 2:15pm, will I make it?! The last time I tried to figure out the time I was sunk like a submarine . I raise my hand and tell Mrs. Euclid, "I will be ready to leave at 2:13pm." Mrs. Euclid laughs and shakes her head and then it occurs to me...the MATH PLAGUE IS GONE! I have been cured and life is great! I can't wait to go home and tell my mom and dad about the day I've had.
Thanks for reading my book, hope you enjoyed!!
All of my pictures I used were found on Google Images and were not copyrighted. A few of my pictures I created myself on Paint to satisfy my text.