As a direct consequence of Mr. Mayo’s ever-popular wakeup tests, “Ditzy” Lukash risked losing her nickname forever during the second week of the spring semester. Although no one thought to question him on the matter, a subtle shift in the nature of Mr. Mayo’s wakeups had been taking place since about the middle of winter term. The change was more of a gentle drift than an abrupt turn, but it was significant nevertheless. Although his passion for the English language, or rather for stamping out careless usage, had not diminished one whit, throughout the winter term Mr. Mayo’s wakeups had been gradually sliding away from issues of language to occupy a wider and more diverse canvas. One unanticipated result — certainly unanticipated by Mr. Mayo — was the sudden illumination of hitherto hidden ability in Ditzy Lukash.
Sometime after spring term ended, when Mr. Mayo had an idle summer to reflect on the previous academic year, he wondered whether Ditzy’s long-established reputation as an airhead might have simply been a product of her very casual attendance record at Woodrow Wilson Composite High. What made him contemplate this possibility was his recall of the day he had, for the first time ever, presented a wakeup test dealing exclusively with numbers. As the students filed in that day he had written the number nine on the chalkboard four times, thusly: 9 9 9 9.
“I want you to take these nines,” he had said into the customary din of books being dropped to the floor, chair legs scraping and low chatter, “and make them equal 100. No limits. Any method is acceptable. You’ve got three minutes!”
To his complete surprise, Ditzy turned the nines into 100 in only a few seconds. Later that day in the faculty lounge, Mr. Mayo’s colleagues, even the math teachers, took several minutes to get the answer.
The very next day, Mr. Mayo’s surprise deepened to shock after Ditzy was way out in front again. This day’s wakeup had dealt with letters of the alphabet. He told the class to insert the missing letters G, H and I in the proper place in the diagram he was about to draw. He then drew a horizontal line across the chalkboard at the front of the room, entering uppercase letters in block form so that the finished product looked like this:
Not only was Ditzy far ahead of the class solving this one, she had even walked to the front of the room unbidden to write her answer on the board! Although Mr. Mayo was most definitely pleased by what appeared to be a grand awakening, he could barely suppress a mild suspicion that there might be more to the situation here than met the eye, an uncomfortable feeling reinforced by the fact that Ditzy had actually been in class two days in a row now, not just on time but early!
His suspicion diminished somewhat when he discovered that Ditzy was no longer working at Wal-Mart, a development which, if nothing else, went some way toward explaining why she was suddenly finding her way to school on a regular basis. It seems that at the very busiest point on a Red Sale Saturday, Ditzy had overloaded a warehouse-only dolly with plastic garbage pails, then, contrary to store policy and safety regulations, not to mention the laws of physics, had opted for a short cut through the store. When the load came crashing down, she had been passing through the glassware department.
Any lingering suspicions Mr. Mayo may have harbored about Ditzy’s skills disappeared on Friday of the second week of spring semester, for on that day he deliberately introduced a distractor into the morning wakeup that he’d never used before: Roman numerals. He’d enhanced the day’s test with a bit of artwork so that what students saw projected on the drop screen when they entered that day was a quite convincing drawing of an old gravestone, complete with what looked like lichen growing in the text.
Ditzy spotted the error on the gravestone before Mr. Mayo even posed the challenge to the class. Interestingly, in what was clearly an act of sensitivity toward her somewhat bewildered English teacher, she whispered her observation to him while the class was still settling down.
Having thus proven herself, Ditzy made every attempt through the remainder of the semester to keep a low profile. She had become comfortable with the nickname over her teenage years and, perhaps more important, was anxious to keep her real name a secret. Her parents, life-long hippies, had named her Turtle Dove when she was born.
What are Ditzy’s answers to Mr. Mayo’s three wakeup tests?