puts it in his pocket. $5 - $2 = $3 so he gives the 3 guys $3 back in total; so each man receives $1 each. If you remember they each paid $10 for the room, but now they’ve each received $1 back and $10-$1 = $9. Well, $9 x 3 = $27 and the bellhop took $2. $27 + $2 = $29. The original amount was $30. Where is the other dollar? Apologies for taxing you with a story problem so early in the year; ask your friendly local math teacher and they will easily explain my fiendish trickery, but it is a fun illustration on how sometimes getting numbers to add up isn’t so easy (and it’s a lot easier to figure out than the BCS system). Here’s another story problem. Your twelve-year old daughter comes home from school and is eager to see all of her friends at dance practice. However, she has enough homework to gag a dozen donkeys. Dance class is pre-paid and she needs to attend to make sure her group is synchronized for competition. But, she had a low “B” in science last grade period and item #1 on tonight’s homework dossier is “Tomorrow: Science Mid-Term Exam.” What do you do? How about another? A friend is in desperate need of support due to some serious curve balls life has thrown at him. His needs are pressing and, because of our modern silly schedules the only time you can get together with him is Thursday at 7:00PM, which just so happens to be the exact time your in-laws are scheduled to be in town to have dinner at your house. What do you do?
tomorrow’s train wreck since, as we all know, “Man Plans, God Laughs.” Side note: Do any of you have a family calendar? My wife used to put a dry erase board in front of my sink that had every meeting, appointment, practice, sports event or happening for the entire month, color-coded by day by family member. One day she found me in cold sweats hiding in the back of the closet chanting “Serenity now.” Since then, she only shows me the current day’s agenda. An entire month was just too much for my melon to manage. I can only take 24 hours of story problems at a time. So, what do we do? Try as I might, I have yet to find a book that lists the answers to life’s story problems in the back and, yes, I would totally cheat if I found one. But now, we are the story problem teachers of the little students that inhabit out habitats. And, while the above problems can’t be solved with a Big Chief tablet and a trusty #2 pencil, they are just as important to teach children as the 3 R’s. Like math problems, there is usually more than one way to come up the correct answer and each of us has our own methods. Just remember, the choices we make also teach our children what to do as they grow and face life’s story problems.
And one more. You just found out the final tournament game for your son’s basketball team is scheduled for next Saturday at 9:00AM. He loves his teammates, and they are facing a team that beat them by one point in overtime two weeks ago. This Saturday morning, also at 9:00AM, is his youth group’s local ministry trip to work at a local food pantry. The mission trip was scheduled months ago. What do you do? While growing up ,I routinely avoided story problems like the plague, but apparently and unfortunately my teachers were right when they told me I needed to learn how to solve these problems. Maybe they were trying to teach me life lessons along with (gag) algebra; either way, these problems are tricky. The real bummer is there aren’t cut-and-dry, blackand-white answers to many of life’s story problems; especially when you throw 1 or 2 or 3 or 19 kids into the mix. What is more important: school or dance? What is more important: family or friends? What is more important: church or sports? These are not simple questions, and the answers can differ, both by child and by day. Today’s perfect schedule is
www.peekaboonwa.com
73