What I took away on my first day

There are not many “first day of school” memories stored in my brain.
I’m not sure if I blocked them out or if I just didn’t have many memorable things happen. I know on my first day of school, I was ready to get in the classroom.
I was the second child so my brother had already gone to school for a year. Therefore, I was ready to make my mark on the world of academia. My mother tells me I didn’t even look back when I marched into my first day of kindergarten.
I do, however, remember my first day of second grade. We had a small math assignment and I suddenly realized I had forgotten how to subtract.
I was nervous and I tried to glance at a few other classmates paper to get an idea, but I also didn’t want to cheat. I remembered that my brother got a cool drawing after his first day of second grade of a bear jumping over alligators. Under the picture were the words, “Congratulations, you survived the first day of second grade.”
I was terrified I was not going to be receiving one of these pictures. Would my picture be of a poor teddy bear being torn to pieces by a group of angry second-grade alligators? Was my mother going to move all of my things into the front lawn and tell me to find another family who couldn’t survive the second grade?
That is when the genius portion of my brain kicked in. If I just add everything I had a good chance of getting most things right and there was the off chance that addition was the same as subtraction.
So I added. I added for every answer. When I got my paper back, I had all the correct answers written next to the wrong ones and I remembered. Subtraction means “take away.”
I’m not sure what we did for the rest of the day. We may have read stories or played “Heads Up, Seven Up.” Either way, I do remember that the end of the day came and as I was walking out the door, I received the prize I had coveted.
They had not taken away or “subtracted” (see, I’ve still got it) my survival certificate. My bear made it across the pond and I was ready to take on the rest of second grade.
There were many first days of school to follow that, and I believe they all went off without a hitch. I never forgot how to subtract again, and I never had to worry about my first day of school. Nothing could stress me out as much as contemplating the fate of my bear, and now that he was safely across the pond, my worries were over.

Luke Harris is the editor of the Burleson Star. Once his math career got into long division, he sort of gave up on the dreams of following in his father’s footsteps of being an accountant. He can be reached at www.burlesonstar.net.