#105: Stacey the Math Whiz
Look, math is objectively the worst. But Stacey is the best, and good for her for being a woman in STEM. She’s obviously the math queen of Stoneybrook, as she’s recruited by the math department chair to be a star on the Mathlete team. Despite initial reservations about nerdiness and her already-busy schedule, Stacey joins up. She’s immediately one of the best math-heads on the team, and the other eight students are impressed and very complimentary. They hype her up like the queen that she is and she likes it (even though, yes, a couple of them are dorks.)
Meanwhile, her dad, Ed “Midlife Crisis” McGill sweeps into town in a brand-new car, announcing that he’s been laid off and is currently New Dad, unemployed instead of a workaholic and wanting to be nicer to Stacey’s mom. Ooookay. Stacey is psyched he’s spending time with her, but Mrs. McGill is nervous — she doesn’t think Mr. McGill is taking unemployment seriously and worries that he’ll have a rude awakening.
In a very cute side plot, Claudia takes over Stacey’s job tutoring Lindsey DeWitt and she does a great job! Claudia may not be a math genius like Stacey, but she’s good at simplifying things and coming up with fun strategies and mnemonics for remembering how to do things. She’s creative, yanno? As she tells Stacey, “you’re better at understanding than explaining,” which is true of so many smart people.
Stacey leads her Mathlete team to a come-from-behind victory at her first math meet, but the happy feeling is short-lived because the tension builds between her parents when Mr. McGill whisks Stacey away to the city for dinner with his girlfriend Samantha instead of staying and having Mrs. McGill’s pot roast. (If I was ol’ Maureen, I’d be pissed too.) Ed keeps doing this type of toxic dude shit, making plans without asking anybody and expecting them to drop everything and go along with it. At one point this means Stacey has to miss a post-competition celebration, and at another point she almost skips the big competition to go to a U4Me concert because he got tickets. Basically, he’s being a real entitled asshole. Stacey is finally like, “DAD! I must go do MATH!” and he finally snaps out of it.
Stacey helps lead the SMS Mathletes to the state championship because she’s amazing (and I just gotta say, there are a lot of crazed fans at these math competitions… is that normal?!) and her dad gets a new job… so hopefully he can lay the hell off monopolizing her time. Parents just don’t understand!
