10 Vampire Scouts Bite Back
"Calvin" said Mr Bryant in exasperation "If you put in as much effort to your math as you do to creating flickbooks of er, 'Vampire Scouts Bite Back' in the corners of your exercise books you'd be a straight 'A' student."
There was some laughter in class, mostly unkind.
"Math is like some weird and arcane foreign language that I can't translate" said Calvin "The numbers don't make any sense."
Mr Bryant sighed.
"Yet your precision for the flick stories ought to stand you in good stead" he said "I'll tell you what, Calvin; I'll make a deal with you. If you'll WORK in class and at your homework I'll ask the Principal to let me start an animation club and teach you how to turn your flick books into movies. Will you accept that as a deal?"
Calvin stared, open mouthed.
"You BET, Mr Bryant!" he breathed. "Only I don't know where to START with the math. I've always had trouble. The numbers have a mind of their own."
"I shouldn't mind betting you're discalculate" said Mr Bryant "It's like dyslexia of numbers."
"Knew he was a dummy" hissed Oliver.
"Actually, Oliver" said Mr Bryant sweetly "Research shows that most people with dyslexia and related problems tend to be above average intellect; otherwise they wouldn't notice that there was something wrong with the way letters and numbers didn't behave for them. And your own homework was quite disgracefully slapdash and you aren't actually good enough at Math to be able to afford that. Moe, you got a couple right; well done. Now I want everyone else to work the exercise on page 56, Moe, you carry on with the next exercise in your book, and Calvin, you and I are going to go through your homework question by question so I can find out where it is you're sticking; and if you need a bit of remedial math, there's no shame in that to give you the best chance of catching up. Because I know you CAN catch up."
"I- I guess sir" said Calvin squirming slightly in shame that if Mr Bryant was going to be nice about it, he could not do as he generally did and just not bother. It wasn't FAIR that he was cool and decent not a tyrant!
oOoOo
Animation club started with about thirty pupils from across the school – to Calvin's disgust – most of whom drifted away as soon as they discovered that for every second of film they would need to make twenty five drawings or move figures or cut outs very precisely twenty five times.
When they were down to ten, Mr Bryant grinned.
"And what we don't need to tell them is that sometimes there are ways of taking short cuts and most of the time, at least when you are beginning you can get away with about half of that" he said.
"Mr Bryant, did you get rid of them on purpose?" asked Jessica.
"Let's just say I want a class that's prepared to take itself fairly seriously" said Mr Bryant. "Now I bent the ear of the metalwork master to weld some spikes onto metal rulers right in the places holes from a four hole punch would go; this is called a registration bar and it keeps your drawings right on top of each other so when you photograph them they don't slide about on the screen in an uncontrolled manner. I've managed to borrow four cameras, so I suggest you work in pairs or threes to start with and we'll muck about with cut out animation – that's how 'South Park' started by the way – to get the idea. I'll have to bill your parents for the special paper for drawn animation and a registry bar but it's not very much. Calvin, will you be wanting to take some home to start work to film next week? And if I let you, will you promise not to neglect your math homework?"
"Yes please Mr Bryant" said Calvin "Please can you go through it with me after school though? To set me going? Otherwise no matter how hard I try it's going to defeat me."
"I certainly shall" said Mr Bryant "And that goes for anyone who's having difficulties. Dear me, I believe I may have to produce my own animation for the school with errant numbers getting up to attack my pupils."
Calvin grinned.
"That's how it feels sometimes sir" he said.
"Well once you have experience of using numbers practically – costing out film production perhaps, as well as working with a dope sheet you might find them less aggressive. Polly, WHY are you giggling?"
"Please sir" the girl was older than Calvin "They say he's weird enough without being on dope! And please, are you supposed to TALK about it to minors?"
"Polly, a dope sheet has nothing to do with such things as drugs" said Mr Bryant "And I'm shocked that you should even think so; I DO hope you don't use! It is a sheet on which you record all the timings in numbers of frames for every drawing or scene; it becomes most important when you are adding sound, so that the scary music is while Barbie is being stabbed in her shower not when she's snogging Ken, though considering the anatomical enormities of the wretched dolls maybe scary music MIGHT be appropriate" he added with a sigh. "And if you want to draw mouth movements to coincide with speech – it's called lip synch" he added.
"And there's a special way to plan it? COOL!" said Calvin, who never minded putting effort into what he enjoyed.
oOoOo
Calvin was so happy after animation club he agreed to teach Jessica how to play Calvinball.
"You're the first girl I taught since my babysitter got so good at it she beat me all the time" he said "Using unfair new rules like the babysitter flag."
Jessica soon picked up the main rule – there are no rules except what you make up as you go along – and even Lily deigned to join in with the immutable rule that nobody was allowed to do anything to make white cats dirty.
It was, as Jessica quickly worked out, an excuse to run around fairly aimlessly, trying to see how many of the other players you could irritate with the most ridiculous rules.
Calvin rebelled when she came up with the rule that anyone crossing the poetry line from east to west had to stand on one foot and repeat a nursery rhyme to his mother; so Jessica declared a penalty that he had to go and do one of his math problems before he was freed from the sin bin.
"Trust a girl to drag work into it" he grumbled.
"Well if math problems are a part of Calvinball I figured they might not be as scary" said Jessica.
Calvin pondered that.
"We'll see" he said and went off to complete the penalty.
Coming to it fresh from exercise and without having worked himself up into a worry about it, the problem was not as hard as he was expecting! He hurried out having come up with a rule that if he touched Jessica with the hopping flag she had to hop until released from it by touching something stripy.
He had a deep suspicion that Hobbes let Jessica catch up to him far too easily to break that penalty; but then, Hobbes always had been a sucker for the babes.
And he wasn't afraid of Math for the next day; he'd done the first problem and he was pretty sure he could do the others!