How Many Teachers Does it Take to Navigate Houston?

Apparently, none. Just call an Aggie.

Here’s the story as best as I can tell from my experience. Caci was invited (or required) to attend a teacher’s conference in Houston this weekend, and she was set to stay at the InterContinental Hotel in Houston. Driving with a fellow teacher, she headed south armed with a gritty determination and directions from Aunt Patti. Let me be really clear here, I never saw the directions from Aunt Patti, and they were not ever read to me over the phone, so I can’t speak intelligently about the quality of that manuscript. I can speak from my own experience, though, and say that I’ve never gotten lost following Aunt Patti’s directions, so my assumption must be that they were correct, complete, and valid. UPDATE: I just got a call from Caci, as I am working on this post, and she informed me that the real issue was not with directions written by Aunt Patti, but that they were following Aunt Patti and got separated. Caci went the right way and Aunt Patti went the wrong way. That seems a little suspicious to me, but you judge for yourself after you read the events of this past Friday.

Once in Houston, a dilemma quickly became apparent. The directions indicated that Caci should take Exit 9A from I-610 South, but Caci was on I-610 East. “What to do? Turn around? Well, that would just put us on I-610 West,” reasoned Caci, “and I remember from that geography class I taught my kids once that East and West are not the same as North and South. Or was it that North and South are not the same as East and West? I get so confused with directions. I need a better solution.” After quickly conferring with the passengers, they agreed that reinforcements needed to be called in, so avoiding the gaze of any police officers, the cell phone was dialed.

Ring…Ring...Okay, my phone was actually on vibrate, so it was more like…bzzz…bzzz….oohh….bzzz…bzzz….ahhh….bzzzz….bzzzzz….mmmm……Ahem. Sorry. I hope there are no kids reading this.

Seriously, Leah answered the phone as I was in the other room getting ready to go shopping: my favorite thing to do on my Friday off. Caci was calling to find out if I knew where Exit 9A off of I-610 South was located. Since I was not able to talk at the time, Leah offered to get on the computer and try to guide Caci by reading the map for her. Now, please remember that I love my wife dearly. She’s the mother of my children, and the best wife in the world. She’s always trying to help people in need, and I think that’s an awesome attribute. She can’t read a map to save her life, though. Seriously, you might as well ask her to try and cook using a recipe written in hieroglyphics. You’d probably get boiled pig turds or something, and when you ask her to read a map for you, you end up in the wrong country. The only way that she can figure out where to go, is to put the map on the ground and stand on it. “Get in the map,” as she says, and that’s pretty hard to do with a computer screen. Leah knows this about herself, but she’s just so keen on trying to help, that she had to give it a try.

Thankfully, I finished getting dressed quickly, and made it upstairs before any real damage had been done. By now, the teacher-mobile was headed South on I-610, and they were really getting confused. How can I-610 East be the same road as I-610 South? They hadn’t yet made the connection that, like most major cities in America, a three-digit interstate is really just a loop (or half-loop in some cases): I-220 in Shreveport, I-635 in Dallas, I-610 in Houston. I was on the case, though, and I found San Felipe (the road they were supposed to exit on), pretty quickly. If they had gone west instead of east when they first exited I-610, they’d be at the hotel already. “So, should we turn around?” Caci queried.

I assured them, that if they stayed on their current path, they would soon be on I-610 West and then I-610 North. Caci asked several times, just to be sure, if she needed to get on a different road for all of that happen, and I guaranteed, through the passenger that was actually dialoging with me, that the road would curve on its own. Soon, the road curved to the west, and then to the north again. Yes, I was on the phone with them this whole time. Then finally, the hotel was visible on the left, and Caci let me go. Later, I called to ensure that she had actually found her way to the hotel and she happily shared that she was already in her room. Whew! I guess sometimes it pays to call an Aggie.

Speaking of paying to call an Aggie, what do you do when you’re a math teacher that can’t figure out a math problem? Of course, you call an Aggie, and this is the second year in a row that I’ve been called on this particular math problem, so I’ll post here for all to enjoy:

You buy a horse for $60.
You sell the horse for $70.
You buy the horse back for $80.
You sell the horse again for $90.
Did you make or lose money? How much?

Interestingly, the correct answer to this problem is not shared at the conference. I guess that makes it more challenging for the teachers if they don’t know for sure that they are doing math correctly, but after hearing the responses of the other teachers in the room, I want Caci to provide me a list of their names because none of them are allowed to teach my kids math. Everyone needs a challenge in life, but it shouldn’t be learning math from someone who can’t add. Thankfully, Caci agreed with my answer for the second year in a row, so I must be right, but I guess we’ll never know for sure.

Now, Caci is headed home, after another phone call to me. You read above how she called right in the middle of me writing this. Yep, she needed directions to get home. I told her to just go back I-610 North from the hotel and then get on whichever highway she took to get to Houston. The only problem with that plan is that she doesn’t know which highway she used to get to Houston in the first place. An educated guess is that it was Highway 59, so she’s headed north on 59 right now. Hopefully, she makes it home okay, but I’m keeping the phone close all day just in case.