Shopping is hard. Let's do math.

Conversation with Quinn during down time at Arisia '11, taking a break from walking around the dealers' room with his brother:

Q: "What's this?" (holds up a Fox Trot panel featuring Jason's math homework)

Me: "It means 'the square root of 9.'"

Q: "What's that?"

Me: "It's the number that makes 9 if you multiply it by itself. So in this case it's three. See, three times three is nine."

Q: "Oh!"

Q: (thinks)

Q: "Well, that doesn't sound so hard."

Me: "Maybe not in this case. But it can be tricky. Like, what's the square root of 81? See? There isn't a really easy way to figure that out except by trial and error."

Q: "Isn't that just 9?"

Me: "..."

Me: "Yes."

Me: "Quinn, how did you figure that out?"

Q (exasperated): "I don't know! I just thought of nine because nine times nine is 81!"

Me: "You just remembered that nine times nine is 81."

Q: "Yes."

Me: "Okay."

Next stop: the Steampunk World's Fair in May, I think.

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