Complaint and Comment: Tangrams?! WTF?!

I subbed for first graders today, and we did tangrams in math class. You know, you get about seven different two dimensional shapes and you're given a picture of something and you have to recreate it with the little shapes? Like a cat, a rabbit, or a house? O.M.G.

For someone spatially challenged like me, they're HARD.

Damn hard. Embarrassingly hard.

They're not easy for first graders, but they gave it that college try, so to speak. They weren't as intimidated as I was, at any rate.

On those childhood aptitude tests, when they showed you a folded box and you had to choose which illustration represented the completed figure? I thought it was some kind of sick joke. Why would anyone need to handle such situations? I mean, if you HAD to, like if it was the last job in the world, maybe you'd try to get good at it, but otherwise? Forget that noise. I just thought it was abominable to have to consider these things. I wanted to write stories about brave and plucky girls with great imaginations who turned out to be good looking AND smart. I wanted to wear dress-up clothes and prance around pretending brimming with confidence.

I mean, those test questions made no sense to me. All I could do was guess blindly. And it showed in my test results. Nobody told me I should design or build ANYTHING, EVER, if you know what I'm saying. I'm pretty sure I got my Tinker Toy AND Lego privileges revoked, too.

Which reminds me, and it really is a related tangent, you must read "King Dork" by Frank Portman. It's just this awesome book, a sort of modern day "Catcher in the Rye" and it's hilarious. Have I mentioned this already? If so, forgive me. I'm a little tired.

Those tangrams really kicked my ass.