Julius writes novels and receives 12% of the price of each book sold in royalties. To the nearest cent, find the royalty Julius receives on a book price of $7.99.Those are not that hard but, from all the bitching and whining and moaning I got, you would have thought I was torturing him.
The equation used to solve these problems is simple... n = % x total or, in this case, royalty = .12 x $7.99
When he finally accepted I wasn't going to let him use it, this ensued...
MBMS: But, why did we even buy it?
EM: Because the school required it.
MBMS: They would have at least let me use it to check the work. Why can't I do that here?
EM: I don't know how they would have used the calculator in school. I'm not a teacher there. I am your teacher here. Writing everything out drills the facts into your head. Checking your work by hand does the same. DO YOUR WORK!
MBMS: But, Mooooooooom, if I make a mistake in one and I don't check it with the calculator then I won't know it's wrong and I'll make the same mistake on other ones.
EM: How can you think that? A multiplication mistake in one does not guarantee a multiplication mistake in the other problems. If you are having problems with the formula, a calculator won't catch that.
OMG, you wouldn't believe the pouting, the huffing, the puffing, and the moaning that followed. I came so close to saying we weren't allowed to use calculators in math class when I was younger, you don't need it either.
Then, EM followed it up by refusing to allow MBMS to print out a 6+ page walk through for a video game. I mean, my god, EM let him do it in the past. How dare she change her mind. I told him that if he wished to sit in front of a glowing screen, he could at least use his own brain power to figure out the game. I said that all having a walk through proved was that he could follow someone else's instructions. Of course, he continued to argue so I finally snapped and said he had a choice between almost non-existent glowing screen time with a walk through or more time without a walk through.
Then, MBMS argues with me about what he would eat for lunch. All he wanted was "rice with sauce. That's the only thing that sounds good." But damn, EM said no again. MBMS could not have just rice and sauce. EM insisted he have something else to help balance his diet...and, miracle of miracles, MBMS was in a much better mood after he ate the other things that EM insisted on him having. He went from being an argumentative pain in the ass to saying "You know mom, I think I was so grouchy just because I was hungry."
ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH...maybe on days like today, I can video tape the days and sell the DVDs as the best source of no-hormonal birth control available.
EM = eeeeeevil mom
MBMS = much beleaguered middle schooler