THE NECESSITY OF MAPS

Emma is in the ninth grade—high school. Yesterday she came home with a map. This school is large enough to need a MAP. That concerned me. Why a map? Are the classrooms part of treasure hunt like an Indiana Jones kind of the find your way through the jungle for a prize at the end.

“Map?” I said, as Emma laid “the map” on the kitchen bar.

“I have to get from here to there,” she said running her finger from one quadrant to another on the opposite side of the school. “Really fast because the teachers get peeved if you’re late.”

“So the teachers are sticklers for punctuality. I like that. I don’t like when people are late. It annoys me. I’m with the teachers on this one.” I studied the map. The school was big. There were hallways like streets going through, cutting across and some dead-ends. It resembled the arrondissements in Paris.

“Did you time how long it took to get from here to there?” I inquired.

“No,” Emma said.

“You need a stopwatch so you can time it and better that time each day by trying different routes until you find the shortest and fastest way to get to each classroom.”

“I was thinking I’d go this way then turn here…,” Emma said. She traced her finger over her route.

I interrupted her. “We need a highlighter,” I said, and reached for one from the pen jar. “Okay, draw it out for me.”

Her pen was poised.

“Stop. Do you only have this one copy?” I asked.

“Yes. They give out one per student,” Emma said.

“I can’t believe how much of our taxes go to paying for school and you only get one map. What if you lose your map? Then what? You’re going to be late to class. The teacher will be peeved. You’ll get bad grades which affects your ability to go to college, which affects your opportunities for fiscal advancements. So you see have not having a back-up copy of the map can affect your entire future.”

“I’ll go make more copies,” Emma said, heading off to Layce’s office.

“Make 31 copies. We’ll keep the original in case we need to make more copies.”

Layce came out of her office. “Why does Emma need 31 copies of her school map?” she asked, holding one corner of the map with careless abandon.

“Be careful with that, it’s the only one we’ve got.”

“So?”

“You want her to be a success, right? She can’t be late for class or her entire academic life will be jeopardized.”

“That doesn’t explain 31 copies of the same map.”

“We need to get her a stopwatch so she can time her various routes and ascertain which way is fastest. Each day we’ll chart the route and the time. At the end of the month, which is why we need 31 copies, she’ll have figured the best route and she’ll move onto having a charmed life.”

“I’ll just walk really fast,” Emma said, as she retrieved the one and only copy of the map.

“We should get her a pedometer that way we can see how many miles she walks, then we can calculated the numbers of calories she’s burning and adjust her nutritional needs,” I said, to a now empty room.

Geez, these people have no sense of gravitas. I called out, “Don’t lose the map.”

From the depths of her bedroom, Emma said, “I won’t!”

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