Imagine That by Mark Fins

Author:Mark Fins [Fins, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press

CHAPTER 25

A little while after Mom left, me and Mr. Hawkins sat down to play Monopoly. Right away he asked if I wouldn’t mind playing with six dice this time instead of our usual four. It sounded crazy, but because it was something Mr. Hawkins wanted to do, I said okay.

As the game went along, I noticed I was getting very, very good at adding up the numbers. When the dice were rolled, I could just look at them and know how much they added up to. And making change was so easy I started doing it in my head. After about an hour, Mr. Hawkins said, “Well, you seem to be pretty good at adding and subtracting. You sure are able to add single numbers and make change quickly.”

It was all true, even though I never thought about it as adding and subtracting. What was important to me was whether I won or not. That was when Mr. Hawkins said, “Would you like to learn more about math? Like how to add and subtract double digits?”

So far, everything Mr. Hawkins had ever suggested turned out to be fun, so I felt confident his idea to teach me about double digits might be fun, too, even though it sounded like something teachers in school would try to make me learn.

“Okay,” I said, shrugging.

“Excellent!” he said.

For the next hour, Mr. Hawkins taught me about adding and subtracting numbers in a way that was as much fun as playing Monopoly and as interesting as I could have ever imagined. I was feeling great about everything he’d taught me, and I had a lot of math questions I wanted to ask him, but he must have gotten pretty tired, because just as I was about to speak, I heard him say, “snooze,” and without so much as another word, his head bent forward and he began to snore. I found myself looking at him and thinking about what kind of person he was. I wondered if he knew how much he helped people, and I wondered if the people he helped appreciated it as much as I did. I thought that when I got to be a grown-up, I would try to help tons of people, just like he did.

I must have fallen asleep right after him, because the next thing I knew I was looking at a wide-awake Mr. Hawkins sitting up in his wheelchair and I was the one just waking up.

“Did you have a good nap?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I answered groggily. “Did you have a good snooze?”

“Yes,” he said. “’Twas a short one but a good one.”

“Is it lunchtime?” I asked.

“It is,” he answered as he sniffed the air. “And I smell something good. Let’s find out what Rosa is up to.”

He wheeled himself toward the kitchen and I wheeled myself along right behind him. By the time we got there, the wonderful smell of fried fish was making my mouth water. When we started eating, I noticed Mr. Hawkins

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