Moment of Zen

I came home from work tonight and my eldest son was sitting at the kitchen table studying. Sure, there were toys everywhere and dishes in the sink, but my husband followed a direction. I nearly cried tears of joy. He created a practice Math test to get my son ready for tomorrow’s test. The other two children were already upstairs taking a bath. I felt like wrapping myself in a curtain, twirling around and singing, “The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music.”

Honestly, I dread homework these days. The assignments are way beyond color by number. I barely made it through Algebra in high school. I want to tell my son that he won’t need to know most of this crap. He lives in the digital world. I had a Commodore 64 with computer discs the size of a pan pizza. Nowadays, you can find the answer to any question online. I’m not ashamed to admit I used Google yesterday to find out how many pints in a quart. However, I am an adult. As a mother is my job to convince my child that he will end up cleaning bathrooms at a circus if he doesn’t memorize everything.

So, I had to correct this practice test. That is when my moment of Zen was ruined. Why? Here is one of the questions my husband came up with:

Susan just lost her job and was dumped by her boyfriend. She wants to work as a secretary, but needs to type 55 words per minute to get hired. If she can put down the cookies and master this skill how many words would she be able to type in an hour?