Eating some humble pie
What an embarrassing memory from first grade teaches about underestimating others, and ourselves
In first grade, I thought I was hot shit at math.
As a kindergartener, my mom would frequently take me to “The Learning Palace,” a store where you could buy educational resources for young kids. To her delight, I was really into numbers - I’m sure she could envision me as a future engineer or professor and wanted to stoke that fire in me. In reality, my interest in numbers was mostly around calculating how many arcade games I could play if I turned my allowance into quarters, but I digress. She would frequently get me math workbooks that I could go through for extra allowance (which meant extra plays on the arcade game). A fabulous incentive.
Because of all this extra attention and effort, I grew up as one of those “smart kids.” You know, one of those nerds that annoyed everyone else. I looked the part too - tiny, glasses, wearing a sweater every day for some unknown reason. In first grade, math came fairly easy to me - mostly because I already had gone through the lessons beforehand from my workbooks - but I didn’t really recognize that I had that advantage. I just thought I was “smart.” That’s what everyone told me, anyway.
Which is weird, right? I don’t think kids should be told they’re smart. They should be told they are diligent, hard-working, good at learning. Because that recognizes the effort that goes into “intelligence.” Instead, being “smart” became part of my identity. And with that, I’m sure, came arrogance. Boredom. Entitlement.
One day, my teacher had an idea - we would do a math competition. Yes! My time to shine! She split our class into two teams, blue and green, and the game was as follows - we would be called up to compete 1v1, the teachers generally pitting similar level kids against each other, and first kid who gets the answer right wins.
And I was kicking butt. 1 + 4? 5, duh. 6 + 3? 9, obviously. Child’s play. I’ve done hundreds of drills on this stuff. I got the answers quicker than anyone, and my team would cheer wildly every time I got the answer right. My teacher and her assistant threw the “smart” kids on green team at me, but it was no matter. Nice try, Jorah. You’re no match for me, Aaron. Bye, Felicia. For that moment, I was a rock star.
The overall score was tied, and I had 4 wins under my belt. The excitement in the classroom was palpable. The teacher and her assistant huddled in the corner, then went back to the front of the class, a mischevious grin on their faces. “One last round to see who the winner is! For blue team, it’ll be Billy…”
I stood up, proudly, and my blue team started cheering me on. We knew we had this in the bag.
“…And for the green team, Jose.”
The noise died down. Wait, Jose? But he… He was a dumb kid! He hadn’t gotten a single point for his team! He was so slow! You could sense the confusion from the other team. Jorah put his hands over his face. Aaron burst out, “what?” No one cheered. Everyone on green team felt a sense of dread. Jose stood up sheepishly, looked around confused and embarrassed, and slowly came to the front of the class, opposite of me.
This was going to be cake.
With a slight smile, my teacher announced, “we’re going to do something a little different.” She started writing the problem on the board, and when she finished, she exclaimed…
“Start!”
My time to be a hero.
…Then I glanced at the problem.
14 + 12.
Panic.
2 numbers plus 2 numbers?! What in the world? That wasn’t in my workbook. We were never taught how to do that! What is this!
I looked over at Jose, who just looked at me back with wide, scared eyes. What was going on? Why would the teacher make us do a problem we hadn’t learned how to handle? My team was ever confident, cheering, “GO BILLY! C’MON!” But I was flummoxed and petrified. I looked over at my teacher and her assistant with pleading eyes, but they both just grinned at me. And then I just stood there, chalk in my hand, staring at this impossible problem, my mind going blank.
The cheering from my team was becoming more desperate. But then something happened. Suddenly, the cheering from green team was becoming louder. “GO JOSE!!! YOU CAN DO IT!” Confused, I looked over at Jose and he was doing something… Odd. He was looking at his fingers, counting them one by one.
Er, counting? Would that work? The numbers are so big! I started counting my fingers as well, but I was too slow. Jose wrote 26 on the board. My teacher excitedly exclaimed “CORRECT! Green team wins!” Blue team was in shambles. Green team erupted in cheers.
I looked over at Jose. He was absolutely beaming.
I was aghast. I lost? I lost… To Jose? What? But how? Counting your fingers is stupid! That’s what kindergarteners did, and we’re in first grade now! Ridiculous. Absurd. Stupid! I retreated back to my desk in embarassment. Blue team was shocked. How did Billy lose? Green team cheered for what felt like hours, then started chanting - “Jose! Jose! Jose!”
As all embarrassing memories tend to do, this memory stuck with me, engraved in stone, popping up randomly when trying to sleep. But it took me a long time to really understand what happened and be able to contextualize it. That, in this story, I was the generic movie bully - arrogant, winning easily, Johnny from the Karate Kid. Jose was the hero, the underdog. He was Daniel-san.
And that my teacher wanted to give him a win. That they saw Jose counting his fingers in earlier and guessed that would be a winning strategy for a harder question. He grew up poor, from a broken home. I grew up middle class, with very attentive parents who gave me many advantages. Despite his upbringing, he was shy and sweet. And he deserved that win. I relied on being “smart,” but I couldn’t adapt to something outside of the box.
He could.
We are so much more than our stereotypes and labels. We are all capable of doing great things and succeeding, despite what others think. And a humble pie, while not tasting great, is good for all of us to eat, sometimes, if we’re getting too high on our horses.
Touché, first grade teacher. And well done, Jose. I hope you remember that win fondly, and that the memory brought you confidence you could draw from for the rest of your life.
You seemed to have still enjoyed school. That's great.
Japanese schools are a bit more oppressive or suffocating.
I guess I can't speak for everyone else.
So just for me and my son. ( I went to school up to junior college and my son up to elementary school 5th.) Now I can see why to a certain degree.
We didn't relate to other children. In his case, it's just one example, I got rid of TV and other children were talking about what happened on TV often and that time girls singer group called 'AKB46' was popular he didn't even know about. Of course nothing in common.
I was good at drawing Manga in stead of Math, I wanted to be a professional and I wanted to be financially independent at the age of around 10. lol
My Manga looked good enough to do that only to my eyes and I applied for a girls' manga award
and of course I didn't get it. My mother kept one Manga story of mine and looked again after becoming adult. It was terrible. I don't know what happened to my eyes then. 😂
I think I had very arrogant eyes then. 🤣
That was funny and good memories. Cheers!❤️