Aug 28, 2008
{ Them numbers }
-ExcellentI wasn't going to post this, but it is really too good not to. And I have been obsessively going over it all day to see if I could have done something differently....
So. A patron asks me for books on numbers for her little boy. She holds her hand out flat at about waist level to indicate “little boy.” She says they are learning their numbers and his don’t look right. She needs books that show how to write the numbers.
I show her children’s math books. I show her books with pictures of numbers. They aren’t right; they don’t show how to write them. So I finally, after twenty minutes, find the book “everything your kindergartener needs to know” under the heading “penmanship” and show her the sections on how to write numbers.....
“This isn’t it. He’s in sixth grade.”
“Sixth grade? Ok. But this does show how to form the numbers.”
“But these are numbers.”
“Yes. You asked me for books on how to write numbers.”
“No. Numbers. Like O N E. They are writing the words. His words don’t look right.”
“Ok. Like handwriting, then?”
“No.”
I never did find her anything satisfactory.
At the end of the whole thing she patted me on the shoulder and told me that "it's ok, I'll ask the boy's teacher. We were using the Dictionary at home, but I lost it."
Fuck. I could have found her a Dictionary.
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