As a sophomore attending La Cueva high school, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was enrolled in an honors geometry class, even though I had no honor, nor class. Most of the my time in that room was spent watching episodes of The Office, on my friend Brady’s engraved, black, iPod video*. He mentioned how he was one of the first people in Albuquerque to get one. In his mind he believed this, so it was true in mine. Half radio, half television, it was only good at like three fourths of those things. I don’t know if that math checks out, but as it has already been established that I’m bad at math, that’s the joke.
(*For not old people, the iPod video was an iPod that still had a scroll wheel, not even the full screen touch ones, that would come out a mere two years later.)
Our teacher had a rule that if you got higher than a 75 on any test, you didn’t have to do any homework. This sounds like an admittedly low bar to clear, but seeing as I’m also bad at physics, I could rarely jump over that. I quickly noticed two things. People who got above 75’s were doing things like taking my place as the wearer of the left earphone, by Brady’s side, as they watched episodes of The Office, on his engraved, black, iPod video. Secondly, my teacher never actually marked what I did wrong on my tests, and she always went over the tests after handing them out.
Thus, a plan was hatched from my teenage mind. I tossed out my urges concerning Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Cast out my desires to play Call of Duty day and night. Expelled my love for Vladimir Guerrero* a man who played on the newly minted Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. My mind was empty and I knew what I had to do.
(*For not old people, this is the father of Vladimir Guerroro Jr. He was really good. It should also be noted they just go by the Los Angeles Angels now. With little traffic, you can get to Anaheim to Los Angeles in around 40 minutes.)
I would change my work to the correct answer, just enough to reach the, “no homework for me” threshold, saunter to my teachers desk with the swagger of a teenager who thought he looked good with an Abraham Lincoln style “chin curtain” beard, and proclaimed she had made yet another mistake on my test. Apologetic, and I’m sure never none the wiser, she would correct that horrendous error. A 77 here, a 75 there. I knew very little in life, but I knew enough not to test my limits with grades that started with eight.
Had I done the homework, would I have improved in between tests, making this whole process fraught with potential academic punishment unnecessary? Almost certainly. But as a way to continue to watch The Office on my friend Brady’s engraved, black, iPod video, there was nothing I wouldn’t do to make that as easy as possible.
Is that not the plight of the teenager? To complain about how hard something is, put in as little work as possible for that something, yet you put in as much work thinking of ways to avoid the previously mentioned more work, that it all washes out in the end? I had Buffy to dream of. Call of Duty to play. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim games to watch. I could learn math, or I could just coast by and be told, for the fifth year in a row, dating back to the sixth grade, how I was on “probation” in my honors math track. Those pigs never tossed me out, while I have forgotten everything they taught me.
I have no honor, nor class.
This is a long way of saying I would not have survived the cube, in the 1997 film Cube, directed by Vincenzo Natali. There’s a lot of math in it, involving shapes, which I think is the main focus of geometry! I would have sat back and ignored everyone, as they perish in a variety of Mouse Trappian death rooms, while I watched episodes of The Office on my friend Brady’s engraved, black, iPod Video. As Michael Scott would say, “Ain’t no party like a Cube party, because a Cube party don’t stop until you’re dead.”
The image speaks for itself.