Advanced Trigonometry

The Evil One had been threatening for several days now, but I went five by five in the bunker john after getting up this morning. Only four hours of sleepless discomfort were required. Things are improving?

When I was in high school my Trigonometry teacher, the head math teacher, gave us a little speech one day about how he had asked the school for funding to teach a Calculus course, and had been turned down. Then he said that in the first half of the year he was going to teach us Trigonometry, and in the second half he would teach us Advanced Trigonometry. He must have said that about six times. He almost screamed it. He got red in the face. It may have been obvious to anyone else, but I was a gullible dope.

When I was a freshman in college, I took a Calculus course. They began with a little review of Advanced Trigonometry. The weeks went by and I began to wonder when they would get to Calculus. I actually said this to another student in the class.

I took the final exam, and got an 'A' in the class. It was only after the class was over -- having been entirely devoted to 'Advanced Trigonometry' -- that I realized that my high school teacher had taught us Calculus.