Month: January 2025

I’ve mentioned in a previous posting that I have complex dreams. I woke up yesterday morning with something in my head that wasn’t necessarily related to a dream, but it’s interesting — and I’m going to map it out now. 

Easy Square Process
I came to the realization that it’s easy to figure out the square of a number if it’s near another number: Take the square of the nearby number, and add both that number and the adjacent number to it.

Example: 11 Squared
To determine 11 squared, you do the following:

10 squared is 100. To find out what 11 squared is, you start with 100, and add 10 to it, and then add 11 to it. You end up with 121.

11 squared isn’t that exciting, because many people may already know that it is 121. This process is more useful with larger numbers.

Example: 101 Squared
Say you wanted to know what 101 squared. This is the way to do it:

100 squared is 10,000. Add 100 and 101 to it, and you get 10,201 — which is what 101 squared is.

Example: 99 Squared
You can do it in the other direction too. If you want to know what 99 square is, start with 10,000 subtract 100 from it and then subtract 99. You end up with 9801. That is what 99 squared is.

Example: 102 Squared
If you’re looking to find a number that is farther away than just one digit, you need to do more addition or more subtraction. As an example, 102 squared is going to be 10,000 plus 100+101 plus 101+102. Which equals 10,404. Essentially you need to do the addition or the subtraction as many times as the number is different.

Proof
To validate this process, you can see it through algebra:

(X+1)² = X² + 2X + 1 — which can be organized as:

X² + X + (X+1) — which is the logic I mentioned above

Summary
It’s a little silly for me to write this down and put it on my writing site, but it is interesting to me that I woke up with this in my head. This simple way of getting the square of certain numbers is interesting, and potentially useful.

I also wake up from complex dreams — I should document these, and use them as plots for written stories.

When I was in grade school, I went to a Catholic elementary school called Saint Francis of Assisi. I lived in West Virginia, which is somewhat of a backwards state, but our school system was actually pretty solid. (Proof: A group from Japan visited our school system to gather guidance on how to improve their school system. 🤔)

SOCIALLY CONNECTED
It’s interesting because our house was close to the elementary school, and we had a pretty good connection with the school and church. Not only that, my siblings and I are pretty smart – and so the school teachers and other church/school workers would sometimes rely on us to help them out.

We had a pretty good connection with the Catholic priests at the church. Plus, some of my male siblings were altar boys — as I was. The priests would even come to our house and be social with us: pool, ping pong, etc. (Two of the priests made a little ‘too strong’ connections with some female church members, stopped being priests, and married them.)

MY ‘JOB’
I have a problem-solving / engineering head. For this reason, it was interesting to me that the school teachers would rely on me to solve problem situations. A few examples:

• Mimeograph — I’m an old guy. Back in the day, if you wanted to make paper copies of something, we didn’t have printers or copiers to accomplish this. Instead, there was something called a mimeograph machine. This was a device that gave you the ability to make copies of something — provided you properly created the initial input to do so. After creating the source ‘input paper’, you would turn a crank, and copies would spit out. One day, the mimeograph machine wasn’t working, so they asked me to take a look at it and see if I could fix it. It’s a little weird to ask an elementary school student to fix something, but they must have known that I had an engineering head, and could potentially make things work. I did fix it, and they were able to produce what they needed.
• Parrot — Another interesting situation was — there was a small parrot (maybe a parakeet?) that had gotten loose in a classroom. The classroom was empty, so it wasn’t really a major issue, other than they needed to get the parrot captured and put back in its cage. They asked me to do this — possibly because I was younger and able to stand on tables and desks and grab the parrot, but also because, again, I’m a problem solver. I did grab the parrot, and got it back in its cage. BUT, at one point, the parrot bit my hand when I grabbed it – and I still have some scars on my hand from that incident.
• Roof — They used to send me onto the roof for two different purposes: (1) to flip the church bell which could get flipped over and stuck if the rope to make it ring was pulled too hard, and (2) to recover kickballs that someone kicked onto the roof. The roof was two stories high (pretty tall), but was flat — so it wasn’t that dangerous to be on – as long as I didn’t get too near the edge.

AGGRESSIVE NUNS
Back in the day, Catholic nuns were allowed to manage the students using aggressive techniques. I was a generally well-behaved student, but I was smacked multiple times (sometimes with a wooden paddle) when I did something the nuns didn’t like. I remember during a fire drill, covering my ears with my hands as I was walking past the wall-mounted alarm device. A nun smacked me in the head with her hand because of this.

DANGEROUS PLAYGROUND
Decades ago, those building a school playground didn’t think about how safe it was. The playground at my elementary school had tall metal climbing structures — some with parts 10 feet off the paved ground. I played frequently on these structures and never got hurt, but I’m sure some kids did. Playgrounds today are more sensibly built.

SOCIAL WITH STUDENTS
I was connected with kids in my class who weren’t white skinned — partly because my parents didn’t teach me to think non-white people weren’t as good as white people (nice). I remember frequently hanging on the playground with a Chinese girl and a black boy. (I actually really liked the Chinese girl, but was too young to have a girlfriend.)

WHO IS THE BUTTHEAD?
I remember tripping a guy who was running laps around the playground. Why did I do this? I’d like to think that it was because he had previously done something bad to someone else. Strange.

SUMMARY
My elementary school experience was pretty unique and crazy. A lot happened (both good and bad) — but it definitely was a significant part of my childhood, and I strongly remember my time there more than at later schools.