Composed by Kevin Epp, Tabitha Ricketts, and Andrew Steinbergs
“I hate math!” Joe complained. “I can’t wait to never have to do multiplication again!”
His mother was searching the bookshelf next to him. “Well that’s just too bad, Joe,” she told him. “Multiplication isn’t the kind of thing that goes away.”
Joe frowned. “It will for me! Once I’m out of the third grade, I’m never going to use any math ever again!”
Joe’s mother smiled at him. “Is that what you think? You’d be surprised, dear. Math shows up in all sorts of places, even after the third grade.” She tousled his hair before picking a book from the shelf and making her way out of the den. “Remember,” she called over her shoulder, “if you finish before dinner, you can play with your new Lego set.”
Joe turned to look at the colorful box sitting on the table across the room. He had just received the Lego kit for his birthday. It was a real bridge design. The commercial on TV said it worked just like a real bridge, and could even hold up if you put it between two chairs and crisscrossed it with all sorts of Lego traffic.
Joe had wanted to build it all day. All through school it was the only thing he could think about. And now that he was finally home his mom had said he couldn’t even open the box until all his homework was done — even the math.
The phone rang from its cradle on the desk beside him, and Joe jumped. He looked at the caller ID: Inderwold. It was Joe’s best friend, Molly.
“Hi, Molly!” Joe answered the phone.
“Hey Joe. You haven’t opened your Lego bridge yet, have you?”
“Not yet,” Joe said sadly.
“Okay, good. I want you to wait for me. I can’t come over yet, though. My mom said I had to do my math homework first,” Molly said.
“Yeah, me too.” Joe stuck out his tongue. “But don’t worry, I won’t touch the Legos without you!”
Joe hung up with Molly and turned back to his math worksheet. It was covered in plus signs and multiplication signs and numbers, tons and tons of numbers. It made Joe’s eyes heavy just looking at them. He stifled a yawn and tried to focus, but as he sat there his eyelids kept getting heavier and heavier…
The next thing he knew, the den had disappeared. Suddenly wide awake, Joe found himself on a large platform. Numbers floated in the air around him.
How did I get here? he thought. Where am I? Where’s home?
Joe nervously took several steps forward. The platform seemed solid, even though everything else around him looked like far-away clouds. Before he could take a breath, an evil-looking wizard appeared. The wizard could see that all of the numbers and operations floating around scared Joe.
“I bet you want to get out of here,” the wizard said. Joe nodded shyly. “Well, unfortunately for you, the only out of my wacky world is to solve all of my math problems!”
Joe started to sweat as he looked around at the huge numbers. 6 +14. 124-23. 6 x 9. All of the numbers made Joe dizzy. When he turned back to the platform, he realized that the wizard had left, and in its place was a single sheet of paper and a pencil to record his fateful answers.
“Joe? What is this place?”
Joe looked to his left and saw Molly on a similar platform not too far away. “I’m not sure. I think we need to do that wizard’s math homework in order to get home.”
“Okay. Ooh, I recognize that problem over there from our homework tonight! The answer is 24!” Molly exclaimed.
Joe looked over and saw 3×8. “I’m not too good at multiplication, so I’ll trust you.”
“Oh, it’s really not that hard, Joe.” Molly said. “Remember the trick from class? You just need to make 8 groups of 3, like this.” Molly scooped up a handful of marbles that were on her platform and arranged them into 8 separate groups of 3 marbles each. “And then you count them all up!”
Joe found some marbles on his platform and tried Molly’s trick. Sure enough, he got 24 as his answer. “That’s not so bad,” he said.
“What’s the next one?” Molly asked.
“4×5,” Joe called back. They both reached for their marbles.
They worked through all of the floating problems one by one, helping each other along the way. Eventually, only 5×9 remained. Joe was just finishing his marble groupings when Molly exclaimed, “45! It’s 45!”
The second Joe wrote down the answer he found himself next to Molly on another, smaller platform.
Molly asked, “What now?”
Off in the distance, Joe spotted what appeared to be a door, but no way to get there. “Do you think that’ll take us home, Molly? How do we get there?”
“How about this pile of blocks over there? It’ll be just like playing with Legos!” Molly said.
Sure enough, when Joe turned around, there was a pile of huge Lego blocks. Each one had a number written on it.
Just then, the wizard appeared. “I see you’ve made it to my bridge-building problem. This bridge has a twist, though! Each block has a point associated with it, and you can only spend 300 points on your bridge. If you can solve this puzzle, I’ll let the both of you go home.”
“We can do this, Joe,” Molly said. “We’re the best Lego builders in the third grade! Why don’t we start with this block? It’s only 50 points and it’s huge!”
“How about this one next?” Joe asked. “It’s like twice as big and only 70 points. It can get us almost halfway there!”
Molly and Joe kept putting blocks down until they had used up their 300 points.
“We’re still a couple of feet short!” Molly exclaimed. “I saw a block back there that was shaped like an L, and it was cheaper than the block we used over here. But is there a way we can put an L shape in our bridge?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Joe said. Together, the two dragged the L-shaped block to their bridge design. The minutes ticked by as they shifted the blocks into pattern after pattern, trying to find a shape that worked.
“Wait, how about this?” Joe moved one block left and another block right, and slipped the L-shape into the empty slot.
“It works perfectly!” Molly ran to the end of the bridge and opened the door. A blinding white light filled the space until Joe couldn’t see anything anymore…
…And then he jumped awake in a panic. He blinked, confused, searching for the wizard. He looked down and realized he was at his desk with his homework in front of him. Somehow, every problem was done! Although Joe wasn’t quite sure how he had finished the problems, he was excited to be able to play with his Legos.
“Joe, Molly is here to see you,” Joe’s mom yelled upstairs.
Joe ran downstairs with his new Lego kit. “Hey Molly, I had the weirdest dream just now, and you were in it!”
“I had one too, Joe! There were a lot of numbers in it, and an evil wizard, and then I just woke up all of a sudden.”
“That sounds a lot like my dream. That’s so weird,” Joe said as he tore open his Lego kit.
“Yeah, but at least we get to play with the Legos now!” Molly said as she pulled out an L-shaped piece from the kit to get started.
keppsite 