"Hey." "All right." "Who put the shapes in the sorter for Hope?" "She's never going to learn if we keep doing it for her." "I didn't do it." "I've just been playing with this slinky for the past two hours." "Oh, my God, she's doing it on her own." "She can do the shape-sorter." "Good job, sweetie." "That's better than good." "That is amazing." "I mean, you were still struggling with that toy when you were four." "Virginia!" "He's getting frustrated again." "Bring the sugar!" "Stupid star!" "You never really did have a knack for the shape-sorter." "We finally just took that toy away and gave you a bucket of checkers." "We said if you could just pick out one at a time, you win!" "Oh, yeah." "I remember that." "Ooh, I was awesome at Checker-Bucket." "How the hell do you open this thing?" "Ah, you're such a good mom." "Ohh... cute." "What is she, about two?" "Just about." "She play with the shape-sorter yet?" "Not yet." "She gets frustrated." "My daughter's a whiz at it." "Have you tried making a Checker-Bucket?" "It's where you put the checkers in, and let them take it out one at at a time." "It's good for the slower kids." "That's what my parents did for me." "Oh, they must be very proud." "Are you able to live on your own, sweetheart?" "Not yet." "Well, someday." "Still annoying customers by bragging about your genius baby?" "I was gonna go with "highly gifted,"" "but if you want to throw the word "genius" around," "I'm not gonna argue with you." "It's good you're proud of her, and not threatened by her like my dad was." "Every time I'd answer more Jeopardy questions than him, he'd accuse me of sleeping with Alex Trebek." "It's a tough thing for a 12-year-old." "Well, I'm not threatened." "Besides, it's not like she's smarter than me." " She's a baby." " Well, not yet." "But if she's not even two and she's smarter than you were at four, then it's only a matter of time before she's smarter than you." "Do the math." "I can't do the math." "I can't do the math!" "Okay." "I was four and she's two." "So, when she's four, I'll be eight." "No, wait a second." "That's not right." "Sucks, man." "I'm glad we never had to worry about a kid being smarter than us." " Hey!" " No offense." "But we always knew you'd be dumb." "'Cause we're both dumb." "And that's how it works." "Your problem is, you made a baby with someone much smarter than you." "You really think Lucy was that much smarter than me?" "She was a college graduate who avoided the police for years while she went on a murder spree." "You're a high school dropout who's been arrested five times for peeing in public." "So, yeah, I'd say she's much smarter than you." "Look, Jimmy, it's like the birds and the bees." "Two birds have a baby, they have a bird." "Two bees have a baby, they have a bee." "You're like a bee that had a baby with a bird." "Now the bird's gone." "And now you're a bee trying to raise a bird-bee." "Makes sense." "So how's a bee supposed to be able to raise a bird-bee?" "I'm not smart enough for that." "And I don't know if I'm going to find another bird to marry." "She's going to have questions." "She's going to think I'm stupid." "This doesn't solve everything." "It is good, though." "What do they put in it to make it taste so sweet?" "Hello." "Welcome to High School Equivalency Class." ""I don't know" is not an answer, Mr. Chance." "It's Drakkar Noir." "I hate this class." "I want to live in a classless society." "Okay, you're mixing up two different uses of the word "class."" "Man, why do you always have to correct everything when I talk?" "It's "when I speak," and it's my job." "Well, correct this." "I quit." "I don't need high school." "I'm gonna be a famous artist like Picasso or Ed Hardy or Vincent van..." " uh, van..." " Gogh." "I'm going!" "God." "Come on, Venom, we're out of here." "Dude, did you not read the restraining order?" "Stop talking to me, and change your clothes." "You're embarrassing an entire movement." "Cool." "I'll see you at the mall." "Please don't recognize me, please don't recognize me..." "Rebecca Asher?" "Drakkar Noir?" "Present." "Great." "And I trust you remember Venom, Queen of the Night?" "Now known as Venom, queen of the night shift at the Burger Barn." "Don't get any ideas." "I still have the restraining order." "Now we're gonna do a little math problem." "If Jimmy Chance dropped out of high school in 2005 and comes back in 2012 to get his G.E.D. diploma, how many years of his life has Jimmy Chance wasted?" "Yes, Jimmy Chance?" " Seven?" " Wrong." "You won't know how many years of your life you wasted until your miserable life is over." "Now, going into geography." "If Jimmy Chance should die in a gutter, drowning in a puddle of his own sick, in the city of Santiago, what country would he be in?" "Anyone?" "Yes, Jimmy Chance?" "I don't know the answer." "I was just wondering if you could stop using me as an example in all of your questions?" "No." "The correct answer is "Chile."" "All right." "Don't forget to read the first three chapters in your Earth Science book." "That would be chapters one, two, and three." "I'll see you all next week, except for Jimmy Chance, who I'm sure will quit by then." "Hey, how's the studying going?" "Oh, not too good." "I'm thinking about asking Sabrina to help tutor me." "No, no, no, no, no, no." "You can't do that." "Jimmy, girls like guys who are dumb and handsome, not really dumb and pleasant-looking." "And we have worked way too hard to keep Sabrina from finding out how stupid you are." "If she's helping you study, there's no way we're going to be able to bail you out." "You guys don't bail me out that much." "We bailed you out last week." "Hey, Jimmy." "Barney told me to tell you we're going to need capers." "Sure." "Capers." "Coming right up." "Yeah." "Burt, we got a word!" "Damn it!" "What's the word?" "Capers." ""C" or a "K"?" "Try "K," no... "C." It seems like a sneaky word." "Where'd everything on that shelf go?" "I don't know." "Looks like there was a caper." "Hello?" "It's a food." "It's a food!" "We found another definition." "Why are there two definitions for one word?" "Just make up new words!" ""Mapers"... "flapers"... it's so easy to fix!" ""Fronge," there's another word!" "Look at that." "Uh, here are the pickled buds of the Mediterranean" "Capparis spinosa bush you asked for." "Oh, thank you." "I hope I didn't confuse you before with my joke." "I thought for a second you were going crazy." "No, I just love a good wordplay." "You're a regular James Joyce." "Hello?" "Burt!" "James Joyce!" "Damn it!" "Okay, you guys bail me out a lot." "But the G.E.D. exam is about normal stuff like math." "And I know enough about that stuff to not embarrass myself in front of Sabrina." "Go ahead, ask me a basic math question." "Okay, okay..." "Okay..." "Oh, my God." "We're too stupid to even think of a question." "Maw Maw, come here and ask Jimmy a math question." "If the radius of a circle is six, what is the area?" "A math question, Maw Maw." "That is math." "The formula is "pi r squared."" "Is she even lucid right now?" "Square pies..." "I think there are squares in math." "But pies are round." "Cobbler's square." "Lemon squares are square." "Brownies are those long, thin squares." "Well, I could use something sweet, right now." "Anybody else hungry?" "I could eat." "Burt, get out here." "There's a dog on TV that can bark dirty words." "What's that?" "Ah... pillows." "Under the pillows." "Uh..." "It's a little machine that makes a fart noise." "I was going to play a little trick on you later." "Make it make the noise." "Batteries must be dead on this thing." "What are you hiding under there?" "That's one of Jimmy's smart books." "What is your game, mister?" "I don't want Jimmy to get smarter than me." "Well, if you get smart, then I'll be the dumbest one." "And I'm not going from the "Moe" to the "Curly" in this trio." "Just put down the book and go watch TV." "And nothing smart." "No PBS and no NBC sitcoms." "Hey." "You guys aren't gonna believe this." "There is a "pi" in math." "It's a squiggly line held up by two little sticks." "What are you doing with my Science book?" "I don't want Hope to think I'm the dumbest one in the house." "Fine." "We'll both get our G.E.D. diplomas, and Mom can be the dumb one." "Is that okay with you, Mom?" "Hell no, it's not okay with me." "You guys get your G.E.D.'s, it'll be like the three blind mice, only two of them got their eyes fixed with that latex surgery and I'll be the only one bumping into things." "I want to get my G.E.D., too." "Oh, no, no, no, no, no." "If you're all educated," "I go back to being the dumbest one in the house again." "That's always gonna be the case, Jimmy." "Just like how the sky will always be blue because of the angle at which the solar illumination travels through the atmosphere." "Give me that damn book!" "Good evening." "Mr. Swift teaches this class?" "Do you think he'll remember us?" "Ladies and Virginia, could you take your seats, please?" "You're just jealous because people find my belly more interesting than your stupid quadradical equations." "I'm making a human bean!" "What are you doing?" "I'm just trying to prepare people for the future." "Unlike you and your idiot boyfriend here, some of these people still have a future." "Oh, we have a future." "I'm gonna be a stay-at-home mom, and Burt is gonna be a stay-at-home rock star." "And the last thing we're gonna need is your stupid math!" "Smell you later, chump." "So, tonight we will be covering a wide range of..." "Oh, I don't believe my eyes." "If it isn't the foul-mouthed, pregnant girl and the boy who thought it was hilarious to draw genitalia in my textbooks." "We've changed a lot since then." "How you doing?" "If "X" equals "Y," then these two lines are...?" "Burt?" "Red." "True, but I was looking for "parallel."" "This is a "right triangle."" "What kind of triangle is this?" "Wrong triangle." "Idiot." "Left triangle!" "Can anyone tell me what happened in the Bay of Pigs?" "There were no actual pigs involved." "It was becoming clear to us that if we were gonna get our G.E.D.'s, we were going to have to get some extra help outside of class." "So I decided to ask Sabrina for help, which meant confessing to her how stupid I really am." "Listen, don't beat yourself up just because as far as traditional education goes, you might not exactly be ahead of the curve." "I think it's "curb." "Ahead of the curb,"" "because when you park, you don't want to hit the curb." "You want to stay ahead of it." "When's this test?" "Next Tuesday." "We should start." "Dad went looking for Barney to help him but didn't know it was his day off, and caught Frank pretending to be the boss and interviewing for a large- breasted personal assistant." "In exchange for Dad not telling Barney or reporting him to the authorities, Frank agreed to help Dad study." "And Mom thought that if she could catch Maw Maw when she was lucid, she'd be the perfect tutor." "For the first time in our lives, we were all eager to learn." "So which one's heavier?" " Sand." " Why?" "Because the sand has a higher density than grass." "Great." "Now volume." "Because sand has a higher density than grass!" ""Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?"" ""I do bite my thumb, sir."" "Oh, this is boring!" "Boring?" "They're about to stab each other's lungs out with swords." "Does your copy have pictures?" "'Cause mine just has a lot of words." "No, the pictures are in my head." "Oh..." "I just keep picturing the words floating around." "Ah, there goes "thumb."" "Well, don't do that." "That's really stupid." "Just picture the guys fighting." "Make a movie in your mind." ""Draw, if you be men."" "Yeah!" "I see 'em!" "I see the guys!" "They're wearing tights!" "One of 'em's got a hat with a purple feather in it." "The other one looks like that detective from Roger Rabbit." " Bob Hoskins." " Yeah, yeah!" "Keep reading." ""Gregory, remember thy swashing blow."" "Ooh!" "The Bob Hoskins guy just took a swing at the guy in the hat." "Oh, it is on now!" "Oh, there goes the word "thumb" again." "Get out of here, thumb!" "♪ The British ran like sissies" "♪ When we threw away their tea and won the... ♪" "♪ Revolutionary War in 1783" "♪ It would've ended sooner if Nixon dropped the bomb ♪" "♪ But it wasn't until 1973 that we got out of Vietnam. ♪" "Eventually all the stuff they were trying to teach us kind of became fun, which I guess is why it started to stick in our heads." "So the centrifugal force is the one pushing you out, and the centripetal force is the one pushing you in." "I'm sorry it took me so long, but I think I get it." ""I am hurt." ""A plague o' both your houses!" "I am spent."" "See, by "houses," Shakespeare doesn't mean "buildings."" "He means the two families." "They hate each other." "I don't know if you ever saw the soap opera Santa Barbara, but it's pretty much the same." "Excuse me." "Are one of you Frank Howdy?" "I'm here to apply for the wiener-sampling job." "Just wait in my office." "I'll be right with you." "♪ That evil Saddam Hussein was a thorn in Dubya's paw ♪" "♪ So we ran him out of Baghdad" "♪ In a night of shock and awe" "♪ And that was every war in American history ♪" "♪ Now I can't wait to see who we fight ♪" "♪ When it comes to World War Three. ♪" "So we decided to put all our hardwork to a practice test." "It didn't matter who scored highest, but we were all going to laugh like hell at whoever scored lowest." "Well, one of you passed." "In your face!" "It wasn't you." "Jimmy's dad, you let me down." "Not only as a tutor, but as a best friend." "Well, it's down to you and me now." "Virginia, you failed, too." "Virginia, you're grounded." "You've lost your cassette-player privileges." "Yes!" "I'm the smartest." "Not quite." "You failed, too." "Hope was actually the only one that passed." "We graded the little answer sheet she was doodling on just for fun." "That kid's really starting to get on my nerves." "It's useless." "I'll never be smarter than Hope." "I can't believe we all studied, and we still got beat by a baby who filled in the dots randomly." "What if it wasn't random?" "What if she's some kind of super genius?" "Hope, what is 3.14?" "Oh, my God, she knew the number for pi." "Or she's pointing out that we haven't fed her in seven hours while we were all busy failing this stupid practice test." "Either way, we're idiots." "I got a 90 in math." "That's out of 800, Mom." "That's a terrible score." "Oh." "That makes me feel less good about my 70 in English." "Well, you beat me." "I tanked everything except math and science." "I got a 500 in English." "I did pretty good." "I mean "pretty well."" "Ugh!" "That's probably another ten points right there." "Yeah, my science and history was a disaster." "A disaster like the great Chicago Fire?" "Or Chamberlain giving up Poland to Hitler?" "That's my fancy way of saying I did good in history." "Wait a second." "Oh, I think we're covered." "Dad, you remember that TV show you made me watch about the tough guy with the silver hair?" "Maude?" "No, it had people in a van, lot of running around..." "Action News?" "Scooby-Doo?" "No, no, it had that theme song that went..." "The A-Team." "Yeah!" "On the A-Team each guy would have a different job on the caper." " Caper!" " Caper!" "Anyway, we could all be like Hope's learning A-Team." "I'll teach history;" "you teach math." " I call demolitions expert." " Yes!" "You're teaching English." "Oh." "You all right?" "I guess." "I mean..." "I'm happy we're gonna make this work out for Hope, but I hate giving Mr. Swift the satisfaction of knowing he was right about me quitting again." "Or... we can get the A-Team on it." "Yeah, Jimmy, it sounds like you have a problem no one else can solve." "We knew that none of us were capable of passing that test on our own." "We just needed to figure out how I could pass it." "The first section is math and science, which will be very important in your careers, whether it's making change or making meth." "Mr. Swift thought nobody could figure out a way to cheat on his test." "But he didn't realize that he was up against the A-Team of cheating." "This section is English." "Since each of us was good at one subject, if we just put the same name on the right answer sheet at the right time..." "The next part is social studies." "...one person was gonna be good at all of them." "Well, it kills me to say it, but I was wrong." "You scored 90%." "Congratulations." "You've earned your G.E.D. diploma." "Which is amazing to me because you're the child of two morons who just posted the lowest score in the history of the G.E.D." "Well, what can I say?" "Some of us are good at taking tests, some of us are good at raising smart children." "We can't all be good at everything." "Smell you later, chump." "At first I was worried that Hope was gonna think" "I was a complete dummy." "But actually, I'm just part dummy like the rest of my family." "But altogether, we make a smarty, just like Hope." "I love it when a plan comes together."