Counting Backwards; Harder Than It Seems

So today Michelle and I were trying to figure out how old her dog is. She remembers getting Pip, her chawiener, (half wiener dog, half chihuahua. Makes for a short, long dog with bug eyes that licks you way too much and pees whenever you touch it. Or in my case she will pee even if I'm just pointing at her..), two days before we started 7th grade. Now we just need to figure out what year that was. Our conversation then goes like this:

"Well you're a freshman in college, count back. 6."-me

 "for some reason I feel like I need to draw a picture to figure this one out"-Michelle

" Haha, 2005. It was fall of 05 if my counting's right, 6 school years." (It's not right)

"so shes 6?"

 "It's 2010 Michelle. 5+5=10"

 "oh, i thought this was 11.........cause it would be when we get out of here. what the heck. my brain is not on."

Now I had yet to see my mistake in counting yet. Until 20 minutes later when I have a realization.

"We started 7th grade in 2004. James graduated in 2006. We were in 8th grade. So 7th in 04. 04-10 is then 6 years."

"ohhh"

And thus we finally had our answer. I hate having to count backwards. Especially school years like that. Since theres always two different calendar years to one school year I'm always wrong. People seem to be able to tell you the exact years they were in what grade, or at least the year they started school. I can't do that. It takes twenty minutes of counting around to figure it out.

It's not only years. I can't count my age for any grade either. I only know the age I am now in the grade I'm in now. Unless it's right after my birthday, then I always forget to add a year. I'm envious of people that can go, "oh I was 8 that year, cause I was in 3rd grade." I'm just like O.O when people say things like that. I'm like "I was 8 sometime in my life. I'm 19 now, so I had to be 8 at some point. And I'm in college so I was in the 3rd grade before. If those two events collided, well that'd be convenient."

People usually just look at me weird after that. I just have nooo idea how old I was at various times in my life. I don't know how old I was for family vacations, just that I wasn't old enough to remember them. I don't know how old I was when I learned to ride a bike, just that it happened. (I just want to say, my parents did not teach me how to ride, nor did my brothers. One day I just got on the stupid bike and went for like 3 feet fell over and went inside happy. After that I never really had problems. Except for that one huge crash. It wasn't my fault, it was my dad's. He grabbed my handlebars. And no, I don't know how old I was.)

I guess I'll just have to make up a handy pocket guide to my ages and school years. Just whip it out when I need it, which is more often than I should. (That sounds a little dirty, and I giggled like a little girl when rereading it. Which is the only reason I'm keeping that in.) But hopefully, being able to count this stuff never becomes vitally important, like life or death because I can't do it. I'm content to know that at some point, I was that young, and at some time I was in those grades. It's close enough and good enough for me.