Today's OneWord: Sum

"So if you add those two numbers, Uma, what's the sum?" asked Mrs. Ranshaw, her nose looking especially long and pointy in the sparse light of the classroom.

The petite, red-haired Russian girl stared at her worksheet. To her, it was gibberish. She blinked, then looked up. "What is sum?"

"Total," coaxed Mrs. Ranshaw, knowing full well of Uma's difficulty with the subject. Some of the students snickered. "The total amount, Uma."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tonight's Poet Corner: Introspection

This introspection is certainly written far earlier than the evening, but starting from early Friday afternoon, I will be without internet until Sunday. I will be celebrating the new year up north with my family, friend, and girlfriend where there are no computers or TV. Which is nice. As a result, there will be no OneWord blog entries for Friday and Saturday. Storyteller will be a day late. I know I intended to post every day, but sometimes life demands a break or vacation from even creative outlets. So once I'm back and provided that my house hasn't been broken into during our trip (yay, irrational worrying), I will be back to posting on Sunday. A lot of things sort of blew up in my face this week. As a result, I'm back to square one in multiple ways. It's injured me mentally and emotionally, and the sting may not go away for some time. Ultimately, however, it'll make me stronger, and I'll take a step forward and continue doing what I'm good at while i...
Read more

Saturday's Storyteller: "Though it had been amusing at first, the mounted deer head's constant quoting of memes was beginning to wear on us."

by Belinda Roddie   Though it had been amusing at first, the mounted deer head's constant quoting of memes was beginning to wear on us. So was the bear skin rug's persistent singing of Parry Gripp jingles. So Ronald took out his shotgun and fired two direct shots in between the deer's eyes before sticking lead between the bear's teeth. When the distant din of shells on wood had subsided, we were greeted with the "Nom nom nom" song. "Ron," I said, "they're already dead." Groaning, Ronald placed his gun aside and pulled out the bottle of Jack Daniels from the cupboard. As he poured him and me two glasses, he shut out the incessant LOLCats references emitting from the bullet-riddled deer head's mouth. He told me he knew he shouldn't have left the laptop open for so long last night, but he had been rather busy "playing checkers" with his girlfriend. I didn't know why he had to be specific with his girlfriend, bu...
Read more

Tonight's Poet Corner: Introspection

I don't believe in such a thing as new beginnings. New beginnings imply starting fresh with no baggage, and in all honesty, to do such would be asking for a full frontal lobotomy before stepping back out into the polluted air of the real world. In fact, I would say going for a new beginning is unhealthy, not only in the fact that to do so would be to erase important lessons from the past, but also in the idea that what you ended was something not remotely beneficial at all. I do understand the importance of being able to live your life as if you've been reborn. Whether it's through religion, romance, a career choice, or simply bailing out of a place with one suitcase and a wad of cash, we all sometimes feel the need to get away and start somewhere else. But that's the thing we have to remember: We still lived those years of our past, and they were still worth something. Even if the only happy moments you can scrape from the wreckage of your previous experiences only a...
Read more