The Decision

The Decision

Mrs. Mills stood at the front of the room. She felt good. She had spent a goodly amount of time on her multiplication presentation. After last year, when Andrew Lange got so upset about it, his parents had to come take him home, she revamped the whole thing.

Her original presentation had sailed her through many years. However, over the last few, it seemed harder for the students to understand. The world had changed and she realized she needed to change too. She listened to her students enough to cater her presentation to their way of thinking, and it seemed to be working!

“Do you have any questions?” she asked, delightedly. One hand went up. “John. Your question?”

“Do you think there are real space aliens?”

“John, I meant about multiplication.”

“But do you? Because some people say no because no one ever caught one, but if I was a space alien I wouldn’t let anyone catch me either.”

“And how does this question relate to multiplication?”

“Well... if there was only one space alien, then it couldn’t multiply, but if it had a wife or a husband they could make lots of them, right?”

“What do you mean?” asked Hank.

“You know, sex...” John said.

“What’s sex?” Hank said. Many of the other classmates burst out laughing, yet some of them just sat quietly. Sex education didn’t start until at least fifth grade.

“I SAID,” Mrs. Mills practically shouted, “questions about multiplication!” but nobody heard. Everyone was buzzing about sex education, the ones that knew, or thought they did teasing the ones that didn’t.

Finally giving up, she rang her bell, hard! The room went silent.

“Are there any questions about number multiplication?” she asked finally, while definitely deciding to look into retirement the very second she got home.