In 5th grade, my elementary school teacher stumbled upon a Sudoku puzzle and brought it into our class. She copied an example from her newspaper clip and posted it on the board. We worked on it together as a class and we got through the puzzle. At the end of class, our teacher drew up a custom grid herself and we transcribed it into our notebooks. Our homework was to solve this Sudoku puzzle.
As the title suggests, the puzzle was not possible. But 5th grade me didn’t believe that was a possibility. Why would an authority on knowledge, the one who introduced me to this topic, give me an impossible puzzle? It didn’t seem hard in class, in fact I copied the example in class and did my best to recreate the steps in the puzzle. I mean, it’s just process of elimination, how hard could it be?
Dinner time rolled around and my parents returned from work. They asked about my homework and I told them I needed help. My parents were only willing to help with my math homework, as English was their second language and they didn’t quite understand how to teach me any other subjects. Funny enough, I was tutored in math on the side; is tutor the right word? More like I was endlessly forced to do math assignments since I could write. So when my parents found out I needed help with numbers, they were more than eager to give me their piece of mind. I told them it wasn’t anything like what I had seen before and that I had tried for an hour or so on the problem.
My mother sat down. She asked me what the puzzle was. I showed her the example from the classroom we solved. She understood. She tried it out for a few minutes. She called in my father. I pointed to the in-classroom example, but my mother took over explaining.
They pulled my notebook from me and started jotting down numbers in small, fine print. I tried to follow their conversation in Chinese. It was the same conversation I had with myself an hour ago in English. Except, my mom was introducing a variable? She wrote down X and X-1 or X+1. I gave her a confused look. “I don’t think that’s the right way, mom. We didn’t do that in class.” She told me to hush and watch.
My father and her talked and argued for five, ten minutes. My father walked away and my mother said there was no answer. It was time for dinner.
What? That’s it?
I felt stupid despite coming to the same conclusion as my mother. Were my parents apathetic or did they just not understand the puzzle? How could there be no answer to a homework assignment?
The next day came and I felt a turn in my stomach. I had missed a homework assignment before, but when it came to numbers and math, I was expect to do well in class. I had a sort of reputation for having the best math knowledge, reciting multiplication tables with some sort of weird, militant enthusiasm and yearning for approval. I was a weird kid and I knew it, I just didn’t know what to do about it.
The afternoon rolls around and it’s time for math. My teacher puts up the grid and looks at the class. No one has an answer. She starts to get a little impatient. “Cary? Mr. Smartypants?”
I felt ashamed. I said I asked my parents and I couldn’t figure out an answer. My teacher looked at Donna, the other Asian in the class. Donna said she didn’t think she had the right answer, but tried writing one on the board anyways since no one else would volunteer. As she finished filling in her answers, she concluded, “but it’s wrong, that’s as close as my parents and I got.”
My teacher looked stunned. She double checked Donna’s work and realized Donna was indeed correct, her answer was insufficient. My teacher turned her back to the class and went up to the board. She grew silent. She picked up her marker and tried again. “No…” she trailed off.
“Huh, I guess it’s trickier making them than it is doing them.” She threw her arms up and laughed, turned around and wiped the board.
Is everyone an idiot?
Leadership, Design, Writing 