In which attempts at humour run into a brick wall

Teaching Pratiti has three main advantages: (a) she is smarter than the average kid, so I need to put in less effort and can cover the ground faster; (b) in the garb of teaching Statistics I can get away with teaching maths (which is far more interesting); and (c) I get good food at her place. But sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it. Because there are few things more dampening than to make clever comments before an unappreciative audience, and with Pratiti, this happens almost every week.

When I try to be funny, she usually quells me with a I-know-you’re-trying-in-your-silly-way-to-make-this-interesting-but-I-won’t-fall-for-it look. But more distressing is how so many of my clever comments are wasted on her because, being a kind of nerd, she often misses pop culture allusions which normal kids of her age ought to catch off the bat.

The other day I was explaining my preference for saying curves ‘hold water’ or ‘shed water’, rather than saying they are convex downwards or concave downwards. I said I find the terminology funny because it reminds me of Phoebe’s cute way of referring to G-sharp as ‘Ice Berg’ and A as ‘Bear Claw’ (because of her finger formations while playing them). But it turns out that she has never seen the Friends episode in question.

The week before, I was telling her about complex roots of cubic functions with real coefficients, and I quoted Yoda describing the Siths Lords’ Rule of Two: “Always two, there are. No more, no less.” Dashed clever of me, I thought it was. But it seems the misdirected girl has not seen a single Star Wars film!

Pratiti is one of those kids whose nerdy habits take them to the top of the class, but ever farther from normalcy. She has read the complete works of Dickens, but has never heard of I.R. Baboon. But I persevere: I will draw an approving giggle from her yet. Even if I have to quote Tolstoy in the next class.