Hillbilly Elegy

In that same bookshop where I read that bit about baseball errors, there was also a box of free books for 'burning or your rage room'. Well, I gotta see what we have here, and what do I find? Several copies of J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy along with several Harry Potter books. Remember this is northwest Portland, a very deep blue corner in a very blue state. I picked up Hillbilly Elegy and took it with me. We already have all the Harry Potter books.

I am about half way through, and so far it's been his life growing up amongst the hill folk, and a rough bunch they are. It's kind of amazing that he amounted to anything, much less Vice President of the United States.

Anyway, on page 58 I came across this little bit that I thought was entertaining. I mean, I thought I was a math whiz:

Alongside these conflicting norms about the value of blue-
collar work existed a massive ignorance about how to achieve
white-collar work. We didn't know that all across the country -
and even in our hometown - other kids had already started a
competition to get ahead in life. During first grade, we played a
game every morning: The teacher would announce the number of
the day, and we'd go person by person and announce a math equa-
tion that produced the number. So if the number of the day was
four, you could announce "two plus two" and claim a prize, usu-
ally a small piece of candy. One day the number was thirty. The
students in in front of me went through the easy answers - "twenty-
nine plus one," "twenty-eight plus two," "fifteen plus fifteen." I
was better than that. I was going to blow the teacher away.

When my turn came. I proudly announced. "Fifty minus
twenty" The teacher gushed, and I receive: two pieces of candy
for my foray into subtraction, a skill we'd learned only days
before. A few moments later, while I beamed over my brilliance,
another student announced, "Ten times three." I had no idea what
that even meant. Times? Who was this guy?