Using the Brain

Using the Brain

“You just made that up.”

“What?” said Ted.

“That crap about Mrs. Gardner. I had her for Ancient History too you know. You’ve only had her a few weeks,” Jane shot back.

“Well,” Ted said. He almost always started explanations with ‘well’ as if the other person was about to be proven wrong. “You had her for your teacher two years ago, a lot can change in two years.”

“I saw her this morning. She stopped and told me she was excited to be my brother’s teacher this year. And, that I was always special to her!”

“She tells all her students they’re special. That’s a teacher trick. You just fell for it.”

“Not true! What is it you think you know about her now?”

“Number one, she’s a witch.”

“I can’t believe you said that! First of all, witches aren’t real they’re storybook people…”

“Wrong.”

She glared, “Second of all she is nice and kind!”

“To students who don’t know she’s a witch…”

“What makes you think she is?”

“I saw her doing a spell…”

“What spell?!”

“She was saying strange words and typing them on her computer…”

“What kind of words?”

“Well, not word, words. Letters and numbers words.”

“Huh?”

“Like ‘4 tg 967, exclamation mark.”

“It’s probably her code to get into her computer you idiot! “Four, TG for Terry Gardner, 967. Some number that means something to her, like her house number or something, and then an exclamation mark. A computer password!”

Ted thought for a minute. “That actually makes sense,” he said, finally.

And that’s how Ted passed all his tests in Ancient History. He memorized the answers from Mrs. Gardner’s computer. Fortunately, he also had some brains beyond sneaky… plus he was pretty sure nobody ever actually needed to know Ancient History.