Reflections on a 1st grade teacher's rectangle 19 years later (or how I learned to stop worrying and love sarcasm)

For some reason today when I was glancing at a random rectangle (or an RR as everyone will be saying next year) a memory from the first grade came back to me. It was of my teacher drawing a square on the chalkboard. My fellow students and I sat quietly listening to her drone on about basic math. After she had drawn some more shapes she turned around and defined the parameters of a square.

"A square has four sides of the same length."

Looking upon the square and feeling that it wasn't as even as she would lead us to believe, I voiced my opinion. A rarity from someone who was usually last to speak up in class.

"Those two sides are different. It looks more like a rectangle," I declared.

Perfectly innocent. I then received what as a young child thought of as honest praise.

"You're right, you must have good eyes," she paused for a moment to fix the square. "You'd make a great engineer."

It took me almost two decades later and the bizarre resurgence of a memory for me to realize that she was being sarcastic. Thanks a lot Mrs. E. Thanks a lot.

In conclusion: it's always best to avoid dark allies in small towns more so than large cities, as anyone in the country will tell you.