There are plenty of ways to be reduced, Mr. Johnson. I know you’re asking me about a fraction, and you mean well by pointing out the bags under my eyes, but there are plenty of ways to be reduced.
Usually, when I meet anyone over thirty, they ask me three things. The Caucasian mother, whispering things about my mixed-race family when I was six, runs into me when I am fourteen and says, “Wow, you’re so tall! I knew you when you were this small; you’ve gotten so big now.” So I look at her with my black-brown eyes and skin that darkens during the summer to confuse people, and I…smile. Or, at a party for which I have been forced into a dress, an indifferent friend of my parents’ friend in his intellectual glasses will look at my black-skinny-jeans-craving body and say, “So what grade did you say you were in again?” Even adults who seem to care, the cool seventh-grade teacher with pink hair and radical ideas, will revert to the age-old, “How old are you?”
Count ‘em, Mr. Johnson, 1, 2, 3. There’s some math for you. Height, grade, age. There are plenty of ways to be reduced.
Listen. When I come to school, there’s supposed to be camaraderie there. Put any two teenagers in a room with no phones and nothing to say and one of them will say that they’re tired. Usually, we mean tired of the latest all-nighter or the English essay or the math, Johnson, but I asked someone once what she was tired of. She looked at me strangely, then, “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Life.”
I nodded. “Lack of change.”
That’s what we’re tired of. So you call on me, and when I’m not quick to respond, you ask me if I’m tired. A normal question from a normal teacher for a normal girl who, in fact, is so tired of the normal. But right now, I’m just tired of your class.
The answer is 2/49ths, Mr. Johnson. But there are plenty of ways to be reduced.
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