Surprising Surprises

I'm going to be blunt about this: I don't like surprises. I hate not being prepared for something and then reaping the horrible, embarrassing consequences. I say this because I was horribly surprised by two things today: A quiz I didn't hear about in Geometry (a.k.a "Death by Triangles") and another quiz I didn't hear about in Composition (don't let the name of the class fool you, we do nothing that even remotely consists of 'composing' — we just read literature that should never be read.)

I guess I shall start off with the "Death by Triangles". But before I start, I will get this out of the way: I am horrible at math. If you pitted a box of rocks against me in a math faceoff, the box of rocks would be the victor hands down. Not only do I find that I am horrible at math, I also notice that I could care less. Nothing motivates me in math; especially when you get these problems that don't have a real answer — they only end up as 4n-6x=5. What does that mean? Heck, I don't know/care. I leave that stuff up to Einstein. Anyways, back to the surprise in "Death by Triangles". The whole week I had been confused about what we were doing exactly, and was hoping to God I didn't have a quiz anytime soon — apparently I didn't hope enough. As soon as I entered the classroom my teacher said, "Get out your calculators, we're going to have a quiz after we correct yesterday's lesson." Then she looked at me and proceeded to do a provocative 'jig' in my direction. I could tell exactly what she was thinking, "Tee-hee, you don't know what's going on! I can't wait to use my red pen on your paper! Tee-hee." Yes, that is what she was thinking — I know it.

When she slapped the quiz on my desk, I actually started laughing. Why? Because "Death by Triangles" is ridiculous. I don't care what the "Area of the shaded region." is. Not knowing the "Circumference of a circle with radius = 19.7 sq. cm." isn't going to cause me to lose sleep at night. However, I did know enough of the answers to know I got at least a B…maybe even a B+.

On to the surprise in Composition. This quiz really caught me off guard. At least I had — in the deepest depths of my mind — somewhat expected there would be a quiz coming in "Death by Triangles". I had, however, no idea I would be quizzed on the chapters I was supposed to read in Composition. Now, I know what you're saying: "If you had only read the chapters assigned to you, you would have had no problem." That is a good point, but I have a reason why I didn't read those pages. I was massively busy last night; I had no time to read such trivial information. Rather I remember thinking, "I can probably just read the pages in class tomorrow." I couldn't have been more wrong.

This time when I saw my teacher handing out the quizzes, I withdrew my hand and refused to take it, saying, "I was really busy last night, can I take it later?" To which the teacher responded, "Ha! No, child, you may not — you worthless piece of nobody. I hope you never pass my class. I'm going to give you an F because you're name is Lukas. Haha." (Maybe that was exaggerated) Finally I reluctantly took the quiz, and proceeded not to know any of the answers. I handed it in, almost blank, and begged — with puppy eyes and the quivering lip — to retake it at a later date. Thankfully, I can — for full credit. Do you know why? Because I am just that cool.

Maybe I shouldn't say that I hate all surprises, because I don't. Say you 'surprised' me with a million dollars. I could hardly be mad. Perhaps I would even hug you and kiss you until you pried me away with your bare arms. But only those surprises elicit good reactions from me.