Friday, January 07, 2011

Apparently Not in Canada!

On my last day of work after Christmas, one of my final administrative tasks was to total up the inventory sheets that our volunteers had tallied the donated toys on, as they "priced" them and sorted them into age groups.

One would think that making a tally would be self-explanatory, right?  Four lines, and then a line through, making groups of five, for easy totaling at the end.

A few minutes in to my task, I discovered that this is apparently not as self-explanatory as I'd thought, and starting taking pictures, emailing them to a friend in California with incredulous comments.

Pictures like this:



And this one (it's hard to see, but they made check marks!):



And last, but not least, there was this:


This person counted in groups of six!

That last one was my final straw.  I sent it to my friend with a message that read "This one counted in groups of six! Do they seriously not teach this in school or something??"

I laughed out loud when her response came:

"Apparently not in Canada! ha!"

I've been laughing ever since.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you weren't so set on nursing I'd think teaching math or elementary education clearly could be good choices in career direction - make sure the youth of Canada know the apparently very challenging skill of tally marks counting by 5's!

Tea said...

Ha! Those pictures crack me up!! ..Especially that last one -Seriously! :)

Lisa said...

LP - still making me laugh! :)

Tea - I know! how bizarre is that? the pictures still crack me up!

Anonymous said...

Math humour :) S.

Natalie said...

Okay, so maybe I should include a lesson on "tally marks" in my Music class??!! Seriously!! Thanks for posting this. It was good for a laugh!!

Lisa said...

Natalie - yep a lesson on "tally marks" might be good :D