As you all probably know, today the Giants (as in, the baseball team, which I recently learned is a completely different entity from New York’s football team) played a game. And, as you all probably know again, it just so happened to take place right smack dab in the middle of the day, and while I was sitting in math class pondering my recent C-minus on a test, somewhere in Cincinnati some athletic, muscled guy with far more coordination than I can ever hope to posses swung a bat at a little white ball, causing the crowd to go wild.

The crowd, as well as my math class.

See, here in Palo Alto, home to more Priuses and high-end eateries than people, sports are a pretty big deal. So big of a deal that it’s acceptable, even encouraged, to sit in the back of a classroom in the middle of the school day with your eyes glued to said athletic, muscled guy as he swings a stick at a ball and proceeds to run around in a circle. So big of a deal that your math teacher will stop the class just to check the score, then each player’s stats, then, probably, the exact coordinate position of the baseball field on a map, the current temperature and the exact number of UV rays beaming down upon her idolized athletes.

Usually, I wouldn’t be complaining about an interruption to the boring, monotonous, life-draining hour and a half that is block period math. However, if I hate a single thing more than numbers in the entire expanse of the world-universe-galaxy, it’s sports. And each time you shout out a score, drowning out the answer to what exactly imaginary numbers are, a little bit of my respect for you dies.

So please.

I don’t leap up in AP US History declaring the newest form of poetry I’ve learned. I don’t announce the brilliant metaphor that just burst into my mind in the midst of Physics. And I don’t scramble atop a desk in Spanish, proclaiming that I have, at last, found the perfect ending for my novel. I don’t force you to endure such over the top enthusiasm for things you probably care next to nothing about. And I expect you to have the same courtesy for me, as well as the rest of my sports-abhorring classmates who would much rather find out what exactly butterflies symbolize in “All Quiet on the Western Front” than hear about the score of a baseball game on the other side of the country.

You may worship Buster Posey like a god, but please remember, there’s no religion in public schools. So next time he, or any of the other athletic, muscled guys, tears your attention away from the riveting subject of multiplying exponents, please, keep your enthusiasm to yourself.