xword faxtx: large denomination bills + fancy marbles

"more marble macro madness" by iMatthew

Today, I learned that William McKinley is on the $500 bill, Grover Cleveland is on the $1,000 bill, James Madison is on the $5,000 bill, and some guy named Salmon P. Chase managed to get his likeness on the $10,000 bill. Also, these large denomination bills are no longer printed, and "as of May 30, 2009, there were only 336 of the $10,000 bills in circulation; 342 remaining $5,000 bills; and 165,372 $1,000 bills still being used" [Wikipedia].

I also learned that TAWS are fancy marbles.

Writing numbers with commas in them reminds me of an exercise we had to do when I went to school in France. We each had our own little personal chalkboard (which I absolutely loved, I don't know why), and the teacher (aka maitre) would dictate a number and we would have to write it down. This was probably much harder for me than for the average student, as I was still learning French at the time. Anyways, everyone laughed at me cuz I put commas in my number, and in Europe they've gotten commas and periods completely confused, as far as numbers go. Useful information for you if you're ever required to participate in a number dictation exercise.

Also, when I was bored out of my mind cuz my teacher put me in the back of the class and mainly ignored me, I would entertain myself by thinking about scratching my fingernails along my own personal chalkboard, it being interesting to me that I could, on demand, give myself goosebumps.

The other thing I entertained myself with was writing stupid horror stories that usually involved people moving to places with some fancy sounding French name that nobody thought to translate, and then at the very end of the story they would find out that the fancy sounding French name actually translated to like House of the Murderous Plants or something equally stupid, so really they shouldn't be surprised that all the plants had come to life and tried to murder them. I remember writing a story called "The Tilted Angel" cuz the angel on our Christmas tree gave me the willies and I figured it was not unreasonable to imagine it coming to life and murdering people. I must have been a rather macabre child.

One more thing I remember vividly about sitting in the back of my classroom in France, ignored and bored out of my mind: that my English-French dictionary was like the best smelling thing of all time. It was my Mom's French-English dictionary from college, and smelled of yellowing paper, I suppose. We had covered it in blue plastic to keep it from falling apart. It is wrong that I have such warm feelings toward a dictionary.

Okay, that is the end of my memories of murdering time in my classroom in France ... for now (cue foreboding music now)!