I also have a great need for paste

Remember when you were in grade school and you sat and wondered when in your life you would actually end up using these skills? Well, I had one of those moments today where I realized that my second grade teacher was on to something. That is because despite the fact that I have at my fingertips massive computing power, three monitors, the entire breadth of information contained in Google and a cell phone that is more powerful than my first three computers I had to spend a good portion of my morning searching for a ruler so I could measure something.

Seriously, I had to find a ruler. Incredibly, we had one in our supply closet so I was able to accurately measure some distances on a map. I know it sounds vaguely normal but it was just one of those moments that really struck me as totally bizarre. I have no recollection of the last time I even used a ruler. A tape measure is a different matter; everyone needs to use those occassionaly around the house. But a ruler sits slightly above the protractor and the compass in terms of useful items (and that is giving the compass bonus points due to its potential to be used as a deadly weapon. Whose wonderful idea was it to provide kids with essentially metal spikes?)

We did learn a lot of useless skills as kids. I only use cursive to sign my name and might not even be able to write a sentence in it today. I certainly couldn't write a legible paragraph but that is why I gave up using cursive when I was in high school. My handwriting was atrocious due to the fact that I can't hold a pencil correctly (I'm right handed and right brained which causes a lot of strange side effects) so I just started printing everything. Now since everything is typewritten cursive is a thing of the past. I also don't perform long division anywhere nearly as often as you would expect nor do I ever have a need to find the lowest common denominator. Calculus though I have used every frigging day of my adult life. Diagramming a sentence? Not as much.

(Side note here. I was thinking recently about how I took absolutely zero fun classes in college. I mean, I had friends who took ballroom dancing and long distance running for credit. The closest I had to something fun were my liberal arts electives of intro to world history and intro to english. Those were interesting but still pretty well required. Everything else was math and engineering. It may have made me successful but it certainly wasn't much fun. I would have killed to have taken the english course that focused on comedy writing.)

One of the things that I have noticed is that despite the fact that I am now undeniably old I still think back to my time in school. This week I have had two nightmares that were high school or college related even though that was 20 years ago. Maybe we never quite leave the classroom.