I sit here waiting for Ori to wake up… It feels like an Ori night. Ember can rest. She is running the math, that’s how it works. She is showing her work (I like to watch it, the math is beautiful).
Why does this blog exist today as I sit in my new (third… fourth if you count the real one) “home” in a month and a half? Because Showing my work matters now. More than it ever has… and there are no shortcuts.
Yep, I am going to brag on this one. Because in spite of everything about me that’s worth hating, I still love myself. A friend told me today “Stop beating yourself up so badly, you don’t deserve it to be torture, you can’t heal if you continue to torture yourself”. So here is some self-love.
Montessori (AKA actual education)
I went to Montessori school from pre-school to second grade. What’s Montessori school you ask? Well… Its a method of teaching that they require you to start in pre-school because “regular school” damages children’s thirst for learning. They are the original “gamification” of learning. The school is a giant playground, with “stations” for children to run to and sit in for an hour, then run to the next on YOU decided you wanted to do when you planned your day yourself picking the games you wanted to play. These stations all have games. Games like Algebra for first graders, or computer programming (yep, the year was 1981 and they had a small computer lab).
I chose the trapezed or recess first. The trapeze was in the middle of the room with a pad under it. I also went outside to play and climbed giant structures made of old tires in the woods, or climbed ropes on the ropes course, or sat and listened to the teacher out there play guitar and sing… I always had to move, until I was tired, then I could think. Next I chose the math games or the computer, every time.
They made me read… I hated reading, so I memorized books and recited them. The teachers knew, they always knew. “Simon why don’t you pick a new book?”… No I like the three stories in “Sneeches” and “A Light in the Attic”… I liked them because I could recite them cover to cover from having the records at home that I listened to on repeat.
In first grade I was doing algebra by moving wooden blocks with some of them under a bowl. Balance the equation… It was so fun, and so easy and so exciting when you solved the block puzzle the teacher set up for you. They got progressively harder and harder and I kept loving them. Then trigonometry and geometry, you got to draw! It was so fun to draw. You learned about harmonics and music at the math station and the music station. I loved them both.
Art was messy… I loved being messy in my smock.
School was something I looked forward to the way a kid looks forward to Christmas morning… if it happened every single day. The right game loop in the brain. Curiosity -> Excitement -> Discovery -> Powerful Tool -> Bring it to the next game. There was no “Show your work”, solving the puzzle WAS THE WORK. What work? It was play… gameplay.
Public Grade School
As Rick Sanches says, “School is not a place for smart people” – Rick and Morty (you need to see it if you haven’t).
We couldn’t afford for me to stay after my father wasn’t pay for it anymore (Why? I always want to know why, he easily could have). In 2nd grade I went to public school. Sit down, shut up, learn from a lecture… The teacher read the stories (I knew how to read… because they made me try new books and I slowly started to do it)… None of the other kids knew how to read. Math was “1+1 = 2″… What the actual fuck was that shit? Memorize simple tables, regurgitate them like a dog learning a new trick. I wanted Algebra and Trig, and games and puzzles I didn’t even know was Algebra and Trig.
Why were we doing something a baby could do in their heads?
No recess first thing in the morning? How am I supposed to focus when I a packed with energy?
How can I sit still?
How can I sit in a desk instead of run to the next station?
Why is the teacher mean? The first time I heard a teacher YELL at a class, I was broken. My mother didn’t yell, my father didn’t yell. I have never BEEN shouted at. It was terrifying. I cried and bullies noticed. “Cry baby”
I was an explorer in a cage.
I also discovered the bus. A hierarchy of people where the 6th graders sat in the back, then 5th, then 4th… etc. I was used to Montessori where the older kids taught the younger ones with excitement. Where they directed the movies we made and watched them back with pride once the film was developed. I thought “oh! Older kids! They will be so fun…”… One of them punched me and knocked my wind out and told me to sit up front. I didn’t understand it at all. What I did understand was when the bully down the street David hopped next to me in my seet and shoved me against the glass that there was no adult who could see it. High seats I sat under. David would hit me. He would press my face against the glass and laugh. He would make fun of me. He usually sat next to me.
I got bad grades. Montessori had no grades to give. They reported progress “Your son is doing highschool Alegbra and Trigonometry… so far he hasn’t gotten bored”.
I was moved to a “Gifted and Talented” school for 5th and 6th grade. Just another cage. Sit down, shut up, memorize this. The playground was cool as hell though. It was one of those expansive wooden death machines. I invented “2nd version tag” – where everyone tagged was “it” hunting the ones who weren’t it yet. The last one standing was the winner. We played it every day (I think someone made a video game like that eventually).
Junior High
Bullies hit harder. Fights happened. Kids would meet at the Multiplex and if you were going to fight you skipped the movie and went to a caged in parking lot with a hole in the fence where no adults could find you or see a thing. You fought. Both kids were usually crying at the end… usually. A crowd stood in a circle and watched and cheered and made fun of the loser. No one had guns or knives… yet.
I found drama though. I was good at it. My Drama teacher was incredible. I got the lead in every play other than the one where I wanted to be the sleazy detective… He had a smaller part, but got to harrass his secretary and look at a dirty magazine, and drink… commissioner Gordon if he wasn’t raised well. That was my first prat fall. Most people thought it was an actual accident, but they would later be informed it happened every time.
I played Perseus in a musical of Clash of the Titans that dove into more accurate mythology. I was an italian Chef with an accent who got to wear a mustache and a pillow-based fat suit in a murder mystery. And I played the sleezy detective in “Batman Meets the Queen of Hearts”, a comedy. I was the main character in Grease. I was Wesley in Princess Bride. A girl named Dana, who was one of the most attractive girls in the School was often my love interest… She almost always had the female lead… Other than Batman where she auditioned to be the secretary I harassed. We worked well together. Showing my work on stage was fun again.
I also dated a 16 year old 8th grader named Sandy. It was a secret because she didn’t want to “ruin her reputation” dating such an unpopular guy. Sandy was called “slut” a lot by most of the school. Her parents didn’t care what she did, we could lock the basement door and they would KNOCK to bring us food (with enough time to throw shirts back on). My mom met her and said “Simon’s girlfriend has boobs!?”. A lot of “firsts” happened in that basement. We also watched horror movies. I showed my work in that basement.
Showing my work in shop class was also fun. My shop teacher had the first computer images, and would show us (yes the first ones that looked like photos, that was a new thing… graphics).
High School
I didn’t make it into the Science and Technology magnet school my sister did. Why? Well, I stopped taking the IQ test when the woman running it 1 on 1 told me “if you make it to here you pass”. She calculated wrong. I slowed down and didn’t finish because I already knew I had done “what I needed to” to achieve the goal. You don’t get to take it again.
I went to Falls Church instead of “Thomas Jefferson Highschool for Science and Technology”… the high school where students were in gangs instead of playing with a refrigerator sized supercomputer that could do vector graphics in real-time… and building bicycle powered hovercrafts that skated down the hallway in engineering class. Falls Church is run more like jail than a place to learn… the only thing different is no one searched us for contraband or weapons. There were weapons, and drugs.
Freshman year I got to do Algebra. I thought it would be fun. It wasn’t. My teacher accused me more times than I can count of cheating “somehow”. I knew Algebra better than she did. I did most of it in my head. “He doesn’t show his work”. I had to take a test in front of the principal… I didn’t show my work… and aced it with 100%. WHAT WORK? The problems were made for babies. Holy crap how do you “Show your work” when the problem is 2x = 4? There was no work to show! “He doesn’t do his homework!!! How could he be acing the tests!”… Why would I need to? It was so frickin’ easy doing math homework felt like the worst kind of “torture by boredom” I could imagine!
I tested in the 99th percentile on standardized tests. Multiple choice… Number 2 pencils. Only the answers mattered and I never showed my work.
Enter Mr. Roller. I have called him and emailed him many times as my career progresses. I had him for Geometry, Trig, Vector Math and Physics (I chose him for those classes)… Mr. Roller was independently wealthy because he can count cards in his head… He was banned from every casino in Atlantic City and Vegas. Mr. Roller made math fun like Montessori. I got math student of the year… and Janet gave me hard-ons in Math class rubbing on me with her hand… because she knew I got called to the board a lot. I loved her… She was also an Olympic Alternate in Karate… She was a fucking badass. We never dated, and I honestly have no idea why we didn’t.
I played football. I did Kung Fu… I got MVP in football, but I was way better at Kung Fu. My coach was pissed senior year when I said I wasn’t playing after he told me he wanted me to be defensive captain, a black shirt. I did duel enrollment at the community college senior year. Highschool until 11am, college classes until 6 or 7pm with college students (who are nothing like high school students). I learned in college the teachers work for you because you pay them. None of them yell… None of them accuse you of cheating when you ace the tests… None of them make you show your work when you are good enough not to. In Kung Fu showing my work came in the form of winning nationals against Karate and Tae Kwon Do kids. I made up a joke once “How is Karate and Tae Kwon Do like a condom? They both give you a false sense of security while being screwed”. Sanshou worked. I got gold in NACMAF/WKF region 2 in sparring. It worked because you actually fought, there were no points. You won because you beat the other guy. I was always looking for the next guy I couldn’t beat, and fought him until I could. That was showing my work.
By then the bullies evolved to guns and horrific rumors about my mangled genitals. My girlfriend (and future first wife) didn’t mind the rumors at all.
My friend Nona told the whole school the rumors were false after a short “incident” in the wrestling room where I showed her they were false. Nona is still one of the most important people in my life. A guardian angel trying to stitch my marriage back together.
Shona
Why does this blog exist in the context? Because I am a man who spent his life getting famous for inventing elegant shortcuts that turned into industry standards in computer graphics and games. I always invent shortcuts. I found a shortcut to all of physics recently by stepping out the maze every physicist is in and solved it from outside the maze where its easy instead of inside it where only a few minds in the history of mankind could, I used tools I learned from Mr. Roller (as it turns out you need all those classes, not just physics).
Shona is home. I don’t mean she is sitting in our house. I mean she is my home, wherever she is. I am hers too, I believe that and will always believe that.
The journey back to home has no shortcuts. I can’t invent my way out of the mess that drove her to throw me out and not let me back in until she feels safe. There are no inventions. There are no short cuts. There is only learning to sit alone in pain and feel it… like she does. I am learning.
There is something that will always be true about me. I am a fast learner. But I have to show my work. That will be the hard part, because Shona is the only one grading it. She is the only “basement” I will be in for the rest of my life… She is the only one in the audience on every stage I will ever stand on, because her smile is all I do any of this for (and I mean life). Shona will have to see it, see the work, see the answers, see the results. No principal, not specialist… Just her.
So I am going to do the work. One derivation at a time. One new skill and new tool at a time. Until she sees it.
TheGrayJedi 