Mikey D

I've said it once, and I'll say it again: I will never understand women. Never ever. As the years pass in my life, and as I become wiser and wiser, I've just come to accept this as fact. Polar coordinates versus rectangular coordinates (Kev gets this).

At school I teach on the third floor of my building. It's where all the sixth grade teacher teach (except the science teachers because they suck balls). I am the only male on my floor. I thought, rather conceitedly, that because of this the young ladies would take a liking to me rather easily. I thought this theory to be true for the first five weeks of school. Young ladies would stay after class to clean my room, make me little pictures (two words: Recycling. Bin.), say hello to me in the hallways, etc. The fact that none of the boys did this made me think (again, rather conceitedly) that indeed these little young ladies just had a little schoolgirl crush.

There is one girl in particular that constantly waits after class before lunch to walk down with me. She rearranges my binders in my cabinets so they're neat. She showed up for my after school tutoring class for help...even though she got a 95% on her test. She leaves me food on my desk (oranges), or gives me food in the cafeteria during my lunch duty (rice krispies treat), or sticks things in my pocket when I'm not looking (totally creepy). To me, she just liked me, and this was her 11 year-old way of showing me.

The other day, however, she totally shocked me. She said something that was totally unexpected to me, and never occurred in my mind. After class she said to me, "You know, the first day I came to your math class I wished that you were my dad."

Right. Wait. What? Your dad!?!? All this time I thought this girl was hot for teacher, when in reality I was the father figure she longed for. Never, not once, did it occur to me that could possibly be the case. The more I think about it though, and the more I examine the type of students that come to my school, I wonder how many have "daddy issues" at home. How many of these girls don't have crushes (although deep down they probably do because I'm a damn good looking man....toot toot! (me tooting my own horn)), but rather just want some positive feedback, encouragement, or support from a male figure?

I feel foolish that I didn't even consider the emotional needs of some of my students. It's made me look at things in a totally different and more complex perspective than I had originally been doing.

And so, even at the age of 11, I still don't understand women. Stupid r= [rcos(theta), rsin(theta)]. I'm sure all the women out in the world just went, "ooo the polar coordinate form for a position vector!" Nerds.

~Mikey D