It was late at night. My friend and I was at this grocery store to buy some beer. The grocer was not around, so the daughter attended to us.

“4 large beer please”

The grocer’s daughter was doing her school homework when we placed the order. She had to stop whatever she was doing, and ambled towards the back of the store to fetch the 4 bottles of beer for us.

Curious on what she was doing, I took a peek at her work, and saw that she was doing some integral calculus. I checked her workings out, and it seemed to me that she was quite good at it. Her solution was elaborate, and her work was very neat. I then remarked to my friend,

“This girl totally got it. She’s going to score well.”

My friend nodded in approval. That was when the girl comes out with the 4 bottles of beer, oblivious to what we said about her.

“That will be RM48 please.”

My friend dug out a RM50 note and paid the beer with it. Girl took the RM50 note, stuffed it into a drawer and whipped out…

JENG JENG JENGGG!!

Two RM10 notes.

My friend and I froze. Girl looked at us, unable to decipher what went wrong. I hinted her about her obvious ‘fail’ in basic arithmetic by merely pointing at the wrong change, but she didn’t get it. My friend then decided to get a bit blunt,

“Eh, your mind is still filled with the X’s and Y’s is it?”

Girl finally realized the mistake, went blush, gave out a hearty laugh (she was wearing this serious look when she went to fetch our beer) and gave us the correct change. I guess if it were to be Banglas buying beer that night, the grocer will have to register a negative 18 discrepancy in the account – no thanks to her math genius daughter.