Part of my job description after all-time-lice-checker and Band-Aid alphabetizer is reviewer of homework assignments.
Yesterday after school Hanna was working on her grade three homework. Just for fun, I asked her to read the question she was working on aloud as she seemed a little perplexed and I was in one of those your-mother-is-more-than-a-sexy-French-Maid kind of moods.
The question in question had something to do with hexagonal pyramids and rectangular prisms not to be confused with hexagonal prisms and rectangular pyramids. I learned that the hard way.
It occurred to me I really had no idea what was being asked of her and more importantly, what she was asking of me.
“I need to identify the number of faces, edges and vertices in this hexagonal prism.”
Indeed you do honey. Indeed you do.
If we learned anything from operation Mommy-and-Daddy-Rocked-the-Pioneer-Maple-Syrup-presentation-2012 it’s that I really think you should think about this one long and hard and answer it without my help.
The truth is the number of faces, edges and vertices might be zero. It really looked like a trick to me but I wasn’t willing to make it so easy for her.
She said she thought there were eight faces.
How could anything have eight faces? Surely the answer was just one but I needed her to learn from her mistake. Even the moron on ask.com had eight for the answer.
I decided to tweet my frustrations but really, how much frustration can one expel in 140 characters?
Apparently enough, because I was re-tweeted by the Global Hexagonal Awareness Project. I was really hoping they wouldn’t have a representative standing by during that exact moment of weakness but there they were just waiting for one of us to slip up.
I never wanted to doubt that this was a real robot person responding but I will admit I feared clicking on the link they so helpfully provided should it be just another penis enlargement promotion—fooled me thrice.
Also, there’s a strange looking six sided object with far too many vertices for my taste (but suit yourselves) as the logo.
Let this be a lesson—do not disparage the hexagon on twitter. The prism robots are reading. I’m just waiting for a rectangular prism (Colgate toothpaste box—yes it is a rectangular prism according to the grade three homework I am planning to pull an all-nighter trying to understand) to come flying through my front door.
At least it will no longer be an unidentified flying object. I can now put a name to one of the faces.
