Waiting for Wednesday

So I had your typical personnel interview/testing yesterday and man, was it typical. I had to file things in order of the alphabet, correct misspelled words, do a typing test and (*dun, dun, dun*) add and subtract numbers together.

Now, most of the test was easy as pie and I should have aced it. Except, well, it was timed and it was in front of two young admin people who had not much to do except kinda stare at me while I did it. I also knew that as soon as I handed it in they'd make fun of any little mistake I had made, which made me twitchy and nervous, which in turn made me second guess everything that I thought I knew for certain.

Also, my worst subject ever is math, even the simple kind. It's like I'm dyslexic with numbers or something, and when someone's watching me I go into a spiral of self-doubt that makes me question whether 2 plus 2 really equals four. (No, wait, 2 times 2 equals four, doesn't it? That doesn't make sense. They can't both equal four...can they? Fuck!)

Which brings me to today's Excellent Laze Enhancing Invention:

3. The Calculator
This is one of those inventions that made all the parents in the world worry about the children. "But, but...if they can just punch in numbers and get the right answer without having to think, there will be anarchy and the moon will eat the sun and chaos and bloodshed will reign forever and ever!! Plus, who wants a bunch of McDonald's managers who can't figure out correct change? Oh doom! Doooooooooooom!!"

*sigh* Parents!

But despite all the rhetoric and nay-saying, calculators have continued to flourish in the North American classroom. Contrary to the negative effect some adults thought they would have on children, they have in fact encouraged curiosity in and creativity with numbers, especially when the device is turned upside down. (Hint: you can spell a mild oath or a happy greeting!) And with all the time that children are saving from not having to learn their multiplication tables and whatnot they are freed up to learn the valuable customer service skills that will be more helpful to them in the long run than being able to find the square root of an isosceles triangle (or whatever, who pays attention?)

Best of all, the calculator is very, very environmentally sound. Not only does it save on reams of scrap "show your work" paper, but it was the first widely available electronic device to run mainly on solar power. And it's small enough to fit in a pocket or on a geeky digital watch. (Take that fingers and toes!)

The Calculator: friend to the taxpayer, the restaurant tipper, and personnel agency test-taker alike. The only thing it can't account for is human error!

And that makes it Wednesday's tiny giant in the Lazeful Hall of Fame.