The moral of the toothpicks stories.

(First you have to read the blog below...this website puts the latest story on top and it will be hard to follow this story without reading the background on the first post below.)

So like i was saying, i try to select an honorable senior to go to the grocery story to get a box of 50 cent toothpicks with 250 Toothpicks on the box.

This senior has to be very honest because they can not add or delete any toothpicks after pulling it from the shelf. In fact i give them a roll of tape so they can seal the box until they get back to my school.

One year the president of the student body and eventual Yale student went to buy the box. He came back and i selected another senior to help him count the toothpicks on the floor while i continue with that day's lesson.

After a few minutes and most of the students watching the boys on the ground, they shouted we have 250 TOOTHPICKS !!! They were so proud and already claiming their prize of a six pack of cokes for the class.

But then i looked at the senior i had sent to the store. I said Ben, you know i have done this for 30 years and we have NEVER had exactly 250 toothpicks. Are you SURE ??

Ben started to turn RED....lol

I said i know you guys are just having fun, but we need to be truthfull here....not worth losing our honor over a silly little bet.

Then Ben sang like a canary.

There were actually 252 toothpicks and his buddy counting with him had pressured him into putting two away in his pocket.

All hell broke lose about the coke bets and such.

I said all best were off since there was some trickery going on with the toothpicks.

We also spent the rest of the class talking about honesty and peer pressure as they were getting ready to graduate and go to college. One of my best math lessons of the year.


(and the story continues !!)

So now i am with another class. These are juniors and we have no one to go buy a box of toothpicks. But i have kept the box of toothpicks from my first period and i have promised the students that i have not messed with the box.

Again i choose an honest and reliable junior (this time an all american volleyball player already signed to play for Stanford some day). And she and her friend begun to count the toothpicks on the floor.

I am teaching my lesson for that day when the volleyball player yells out:
"there are exactly 250 toothpicks in this box !!"

The class cheers as they think they have just won a six pack of cokes.

But i walk over and say, now that is not possible. Let me see your stacks of 10's.

I do notice one stack a little lite !!....there are only 8 toothpicks in that pile.

I exclaim, i only count 248 !!

At that point the all american volleyball player who i know is an honest person admits that she put 2 toothpicks in her pocket. She turns red as she produces the 2 toothpicks that they thought they had leftover from the count.

Now everyone is screaming about the bet and the cokes and who did what and when it was done, etc.

It just happened that the senior from the first period just happened to walk in to collect the attendance sheet. I quickly ask him, "how many toothpicks were in this box this morning ?"

He says 250 !!! (to my surprise...i thought we had had a very good discussion about honesty and so forth)

I said, yes, but we had 252 this morning !!

And he says, "I kept the 2 extra toothpicks in my POCKET !!" (bless his heart)

So again we finished the days math lesson talking about honesty and peer pressure and the such.

(I could not have made this up !! and Hollywood would NOT believe it....lol)

I also learned a valuable lesson because i would have bet $1,000 that there were more than 250 toothpicks in THAT box !! and at that moment there were only 250 !!
(since the senior from the first class had kept two in his pocket...dam shame)