the GOT bike

In the fall of 2001, I was working as a long term substitute math teacher to cover for a real math teacher on an unexpected medical leave. Math teachers are apparently in high demand. They must be, otherwise why would a school system hire someone with a degree in English to play at being one? Desperate times, desperate measures, and on the theme of desperation, just before that, a group of people were upset enough with this country that their anger was manipulated into flying planes into buildings here. The last class in my daily schedule as a teacher was Probability and Statistics, and fortunately, the teacher who taught my total knowledge of the subject had a desk ten feet away from mine in the math department office, and he graciously gave me refresher lessons as I needed them. He's a gracious person, with a good sense of humor, who had a bumper sticker pinned above his desk which read, "Lottery: A Tax On People Who Are Bad At Math," but he was too nice to upset anyone...