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Last week I thought I had two suckers...er, buyers for my 2009 Acura MDX. If the sale was to go through I would need the pink slip for the car, stating that I owned it. And I owned it outright.

That meant a journey through my crack filing system. Libraries have the Dewey Decimal system. When it comes to organization and keeping track of all my vitals, I have Doodie Decimated System of Entropy. 

If I ever get nailed with an IRS audit, I will seriously consider the "Dog ate my tax returns" excuse. The good news, as I understand it, is they can only audit the past 3 years of income, which for me has been abysmal, at best. 

While sifting through the detritus of my misspent life, I came across a college exam from 1978. Apart from the sheepskin I "earned", I don't think I have anything from my days at Syracuse University. But I did manage to sock away this exam from Calculus 4 (Math 398). 

I know why I saved it. 

Math 398 was the only class I ever failed. Technically, I also failed Journalism 101, but that was only because I couldn't type the mandatory 25 wpm. Today, with my hybrid hunt and peck and full right hand use, I can type 65-70 wpm. 

Some of them might even be spelled correctly.

Back to Calculus 4 and the nightmares it gave me. For those who don't know, and that might include me, Calculus is the summation of everything a student learns in Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry. Frankly, other than engineers and scientitians, these mathy courses are quite useless. I wish my daughters had been taught the essentials of finance, the intricacies of investing and the importance of good record keeping -- then I could farm out my mess to them.

I look at the photo above and can't believe it made sense to me one day. Though from my failing score that's highly debatable.

Here's the amazing thing. The test was a two hour ordeal. And consisted of 5 questions. The funny scribbles and poorly drawn pictures (seen above in Problem #3) were close to perfect. I lost three points from a possible 20, because of my sloppy math and some poorly executed additions and subtractions. 

I'm guessing it's because I was stoned when I took the exam. I was under the ridiculous, but funny notion, that I could do this kind of higher brain wave stuff better while high as a kite.

I did mention misspent life, right?

Not only did I save the "completed" test in the form of a little blue booklet which were the vernacular of the day, I also saved the test itself. Which was printed on mimeograph paper. And yes, it did smell great.

The type is faded, after close to 50 years that's understandable, otherwise I'd reproduce the questions in clean, easy to read digital format. But here's the deal, many of the symbols, graphics and nomenclature of Math 398 are not available on a 2024 keyboard.

They, like the synapses in my brain that could make sense of it (some of it),  are gone.

Like my hairline.

 

Yeah, #3 was the easy one.