Mr. Moskowitz, my seventh-grade Math teacher, was a nice enough guy, and a pretty good teacher. One thing that annoyed us, as students, were his “surprise quizzes”. The quizzes invariably came on Mondays - but not every Monday (otherwise where’s the surprise?).
Mr. Moskowitz liked to challenge us. For example, he would give us a sequence of numbers 8,14,23,28,34 and ask for the next number. (Well it was 42, the next station on the northbound subway line.)
One day, in November, we figured out the randomness of the surprise quizzes. Mr. Moskowitz was a rabid New York Football Giants fan. In those days, the Giants played on Sundays. If the Giants lost on Sunday, we had a quiz on Monday.
I thought about Mr. Moskowitz on Tuesday night after watching the Mets lose Game 4 to the Dodgers. I was so upset. So foul. I didn't want to talk to anyone. If I were a teacher, I wouldn't want to teach a class. I’d probably give my students a surprise quiz.
Mr. Moskowitz wasn't mean. He was just a Giants fan.