Yep, I was All-State in high school...

Earlier this week I joked about making up math pick-up lines back in high school when I spent too many weekends spent in math contests. There are a lot of stories to tell on that topic and one that no one will believe. That will be tonight’s topic, even though it breaks the first rule of Math Club in that you do not talk about Math Club.

Let’s flashback to my high school years. The younger EC doesn’t have the beer belly and wears even klunkier glasses and is less confident but also more oblivious, which in a strange way evens itself out. This made me an obvious candidate for the Math Club. However, as someone who hung out with the athletes and enjoyed music I was simultaneously the best math student and too cool for Math Club. Ok, maybe saying that I was too cool for Math Club isn’t that impressive of a statement but what I’m trying to get to here is that I didn’t look forward to solving equations after school and spending weekends in contests.

See, that was basically the entire purpose of Math Club. A few times a year you would go off on a Saturday to another school and compete against all these other schools in math. Like you would sit in a classroom, be handed a test and answer all of these questions. Incredibly, I was doing this in my free time. Theoretically it was to help me get into college but to be honest even I thought it was nuts. Basically it would turn into my buddy Shamus and I cracking jokes and ripping on every other purpose in the room (despite the fact that we were both two skinny white kids with glasses who could recite every line from Monty Python by heart).

Well, in my senior year I enter my last regional contest and ended up being one of the highest scores for my region. This meant that I was able to attend the big contest. Yes, arguably my biggest accomplishment in high school was I made the state tournament in math.

(Sigh. Is there a way to say that I was an All-State Mathalete and not sound like the biggest loser on the planet? It’d be easier to say that I spent four years of high school stealing hubcaps.)

Anyway, so my dad drives to me the state tournament at ISU. I’m the only person from my school to qualify so I’m a team of one, dressed in my usual attire of jeans and a Duke basketball t-shirt. In this crowd that stood out. Because these guys had team uniforms. Yes, the math teams all had matching outfits with cute math related sayings on them. Those that didn’t have uniforms were wearing Mathematica t-shirts with pictures of funky geometric shapes on them. I looked around the hall where everyone gathered for the opening ceremonies and I immediately thought a) these people are all freaks and b) I’m probably the only one with a date for prom in this entire room.

It got worse. They go through the welcome and the instructions and then it was time to sing the ICTM State Math Contest Song. In the words of Henry Rollins, I shit you not. Here, reprinted without anyone’s permission, are the lyrics to the ICTM State Math Contest Song.

“It’s the ICTM State Math Contest
And it’s sponsored by CNA
Algebra, Calculators, Pythagoras,
Problem solving all the way.

It’s the ICTM State Math Contest
Great questions for challenge and play
Stimulation for students, ideas for teachers,
Illinois it’s a glorious day.

Illinois it’s a glorious day.
Illinois it’s a glorious day.”

Ok, so here I am. It’s a Saturday morning. I’m somewhere in Normal, Illinois. I’m surrounded by people speaking in math puns and singing, with full enthusiasm usually reserved for a Slayer concert, a song with the words Pythagoras in it. I wasn’t psyched to win the contest. I wanted to flee the room. I expected to start to hear them chant “One of us. One of us” at any moment.

So needless to say I didn’t win. And I’m really, really proud of that fact. And while I hope that my kids will inherit my problem solving ability I also really hope that they get my love for books as well. Because, well, you can talk about poetry and seem cool. But singing about calculators? My lord, even on my geekiest day I can’t come close to touching that one.

(Side note: the reason I have the lyrics is that I kept the program from that day. I don’t know what is more disturbing, that I kept the program from a math contest that I was in fifteen years ago or that I found it in only three minutes. Apparently I do have every aspect of my life in one large, organized file.)