Ms. Thompson answered, ‘The fact is, Stephen, that while your degree of articulateness would not be so surprising in an educated person, the reason it is not surprising is that the average educated person has developed their mind over the course of their education. It is not so common in a boy your age.’
I thought that this was probably a fallacious argument. It was quite hard to explain things to Ms. Thompson. I said, ‘In my opinion this argument is completely fallacious. How can you say that you will not let a stupid person start something until the age of 12 and then say the reason you know they are stupid is they do not know something another person knows because they got to start at the age of 3? In my opinion this is completely preposterous.’
Ms. Thompson asserted, ‘Be that as it may.’
At this point Sibylla returned to the room.
‘It’s all set!’ she exclaimed. ‘I talked to the head and he said they could probably squeeze one more in and that the school always treats every child as an individual.’
‘Obviously we make every attempt,’ began Ms. Thompson.
‘But it looks as though he won’t be in your class.’
‘What a shame,’ regretted Ms. Thompson.
‘Anyway, we won’t take up any more of your time. Come along, David. Everything’s going to be all right.’
MY FIRST WEEK AT SCHOOL
13 September, 1993
Today was my first day at school. I thought maybe now that I was old enough to go to school Sibylla would tell me about my father but she didn’t. Sibylla walked me to school and I was very nervous because if people did not study any languages until they were 12 they must study some other thing and I was a whole year behind.
I thought maybe other people studied more mathematics and science and I had not even finished Algebra Made Easy.
When we got to school Miss Lewis explained that school had started last Thursday. Sibylla said she was sure she had started school on Monday when she was a child.
We didn’t do any science today so I could not tell if that was what people had been doing.
When I got home I started reading The Voyage of the Beagle. This is an excellent book. I have worked out that Charles Darwin could not be my father, because he died in 1882, but I am going to finish the book anyway.
14 September, 1993
Today was my second day at school.
We started the day off by painting pictures of animals. I did a picture of a tarantula with 88 legs. Miss Lewis asked what it was and I explained that it was an oktokaiogdoekontapodal tarantula. I don’t know if there are any real ones, I think this is just something I made up. Then I did another picture. This one was of a heptakaiogdoekontapodal tarantula because the first one got in a fight and lost a leg. Then I did a picture of two monster tarantulas fighting, each one had 55 legs and it took a long time to draw all the legs. Before I had finished Miss Lewis said we should put away our drawings because it was time to do some arithmetic. We were supposed to go to the addition positions and work at our own speed. At addition position 1 you do a worksheet adding 1 to a number and at addition position 2 you add 2 to a number.
When I finished all the worksheets I was the only one at position 9 so I decided to do some multiplication. Addition takes quite a long time to get anywhere unless you are adding big numbers and all the numbers at the positions were quite small. I practised multiplying 99 × 99 and 199 × 199 and some other interesting numbers. I like numbers that are almost some other number.
I read three more chapters of The Voyage of the Beagle tonight. I was too tired to work on Japanese.
15 September
Today was my third day of school. I was still at addition position 9. I decided to practise using the distributive principle of multiplication. The distributive principle of multiplication is in chapter 1 of Algebra Made Easy but it was my own idea to use it with 9 because it is almost 10.
999999 × 999999 = 999998000001
9999999 × 9999999 = 99999980000001
99999999 × 99999999 = 9999999800000001
999999999 × 999999999 = 999999998000000001
9999999999 × 9999999999 = 99999999980000000001
99999999999 × 99999999999 = 9999999999800000000001
999999999999 × 999999999999 = 999999999998000000000001
9999999999999 × 9999999999999 = 99999999999980000000000001
16 September
Today was my fourth day of school.
17 September
Today was my fifth day of school. It was boring.
18 September
Today is Saturday. I mastered 20 characters in Halpern. 417 to go. I told Sibylla I thought I should do some more French and Greek and Latin and Hebrew and Arabic even though I was doing Japanese because apparently I will not get to do them at school until I am 12 and I was afraid I would forget them by then. I thought Sibylla would be appalled but she just said all right. I also pointed out that they probably would not teach me German either until I was 12 so it might be a good idea if she taught me instead. I thought she was going to say I would have to do a lot of Japanese first but instead she said she would show me a little poem because I had been so good all week. The poem was called Erlkönig by Goethe, about a boy who is riding on a horse behind his father and the Erlking keeps calling the boy and the father doesn’t hear and then the boy dies.
19 September
Today was Sunday so I did not have to go to school. I read Amundsen and Scott. I mastered 30 Japanese characters thoroughly and Sibylla commented, ‘Well, at least Mr. Ma will never know, I shudder to think what he would think.’ I asked, ‘Who is Mr. Ma?’ Sibylla said he was the father of a famous cellist. I asked, ‘Is he a travel writer?’ Sibylla said, ‘Not to my knowledge, jinsai.’
MY SECOND WEEK AT SCHOOL
20 September
Today when I got home from school Sibylla was in a terrible state. She said Red Devlin had been taken hostage in Azerbaijan. I asked who was Red Devlin. She said he was a journalist. She said everyone said he could persuade anyone to do anything. He was called Red because he didn’t have red hair and because he was brave to the point of insanity. He had been in Lebanon and then he had gone to Azerbaijan and been kidnapped after three days.
I asked, ‘Was he a good writer?’
‘Oh no,’ said Sibylla, ‘He’s a lousy writer, he goes to all these amazing places and sees tumbledown cottages and ragged urchins and girls with coltlike grace. But what a terrible thing to happen.’
Suddenly I had an idea.
Only time will tell.
21 September
1 × 11 × 11
11 × 11 = (10 × 11) + (1 × 11) = 121
111 × 111 = (100 × 111) + (10 × 111) + (1 × 111) = 12321
1111 × 1111 = (1000 × 1111) + (100 × 1111) + (10 × 1111) +
(1 × 1111) = 1234321
11111 × 11111 × 123454321
111111 × 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 × 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 × 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 × 111111111 = 12345678987654321
22 September
11 × 11 = 121
11 × 111 = 1221
11 × 1111 = 12221
11 × 11111 = 122221
23 September
111 × 111 = 12321
111 × 1111 = 123321
111 × 11111 = 1233321
111 × 111111 = 12333321
1111 × 1111 = 1234321
1111 × 11111 = 12344321
11111 × 111111 = 1234554321
111111 × 1111111 = 123456654321
1111111 × 11111111 = 12345677654321
24 September
111111111 × 11 = 1222222221
111111111 × 111 = 12333333321
111111111 × 1111 = 123444444321