The Day I Became Involved in Burglary

    
     A cat burglar is a burglar who is adept at entering and leaving the burglarized place without attracting notice, according to merriam-webster.com.  But you probably already knew that.  Everyone knows that.  The author of my Geometry book knows that.  My Geometry teacher probably knows that.  The one person who doesn't know that, or at least, didn't until Friday, is me.

     Of course, I thought I knew what a cat burglar was.  Who doesn't know what a cat burglar is?  It's someone who steals cats, obviously.  Duh.  And then, one day, a cat burglar came into my life, and I had to actually put my knowledge into practice.

     I'm taking Geometry this year, and while it looks like it may be involving more numbers soon, so far, it has been painfully easy, and the dullness has been impacted by the fact that for the first couple of weeks, as at the beginning of any class, everyone was too shy to talk to each other, make jokes in class, or be sarcastic.  Well, I can't deal with having my sarcasm suppressed like that, so of course, the only thing to do was to make notes whenever the problems were at all ambiguous.  Alack, such an approach would prove to be my downfall.

     Fast forward from the beginning of the school year to last Tuesday, when I was taking the second test of the course.  It was going along well, I could do every single problem without difficulty, and then, I got to the last problem.  I can't tell you what it was, or what the answer was, because of the small possibility of one of my readers using the same curriculum sometime in the future, but suffice it to say that it involved a cat burglar leaving a safe open.  "This is stupid!" I said to myself.  "Why would a cat burglar leave a safe open?  What would a cat burglar even be doing with a safe?  Why do the burgled people keep their cat in the safe?  Who wrote these problems?"  I could not let this pass without investigation.  I did the problem, put a bracket around it, wrote on the side "Important question: why do they keep their cat in the safe?" turned the test in on Wednesday, and didn't question my definitions at all.

     Fast forward to Friday afternoon.  It has been three days since I took the test, two days since I turned in the test, and I am currently standing in line with my sister, waiting to get into a concert and discussing life, the universe and everything, including the stupidity of certain Geometry problems.  I explain the problem to her, ending my explanation with "WHY DO THEY KEEP THEIR CAT IN THE SAFE?"
     "You know what a cat burglar is, right?" speaks Katie Beth.
     "Ummm...someone who steals cats?"
     "You would think that," she ejaculates, and proceeds to tell me what a cat burglar actually is.
     "Oooh, that's why the problem made absolutely no sense."

     So now, I have a Geometry test with a really stupid, embarrassing note in the margin.  I can only hope the teacher thinks I was being sarcastic.  I shall update at some point after tomorrow, when I have class again, and will get my test back.  According to all the people I've asked, the definition of cat burglar seems to be a pretty well known thing, but they're all wrong.  A cat burglar should be someone who steals cats.  If I had a cat I wouldn't have a problem with a cat burglar coming in and doing their thing, but that is neither here nor there, and I don't have a cat, and therefore don't need anyone to burgle it.

Update: I really thought that was on the test, but it turns out it was actually just on one of the problem sets, and he doesn't really check the problem sets, just makes sure we did all the problems.  Of course, there's still a chance he might have seen it, but there wasn't a note, and he didn't mention it or anything.  Phew.