The Nines

The first grade sticks out in my mind as the grade where the educational system started to fail me.  That alone is a scary thought considering it was my second public school grade and also considering I was educated in Massachusetts.  The one thing I may never forget about first grade was that my class was constantly being assigned the task of writing every number from 1 to 100.  This was a task that was never difficult for me mentally but extremely tedious.  We used these sheets of paper that were about half the size of a standard piece of paper.  These sheets were made of recycled paper and so they were this dull grade color that did a great job of reflecting just how unenthusiastic I was about the prospect of covering them with numbers.  There were no lines, just imperfect specs all over.
Being the good little schoolboy I was, I filled these sheets with 1, 46, 78, 100 and all the exciting numbers in-between.  Since I mastered this task early on I of course began to wonder what came next?  Sure, I should have been able to figure out the formula but 100 was a triple digit.  Perhaps the rules changed when it was three numbers?  And keep in mind my class was assigned only these 100 numbers constantly.  Surely what came after 100 was so complex that our tiny brains could scarcely comprehend this post-centennial numeral.  And so, since my first grade teacher clearly had no interest in furthering my education, I turned to a magical being whose knowledge knew no bounds: my mommy.
I approached my mother, anxious to finally uncover these forbidden numbers that were to never be put upon my delicate gray rectangle of recycled paper.  I asked the loving woman who gave birth to me what came next after 100.  I remember distinctly exactly what my mom told me.  She said "There's a lot of nines."
A lot of nines?  I'd already covered nine.  It comes back?  Multiple times?  Without further questioning I just immediately assumed that the sequence went as follows: 98, 99, 100, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 and so forth for an undetermined amount of nines until I got to the number of dalmatians that Pongo and Perdita parented.  Surely I couldn't memorize the number of nines that came after 100.  I wasn't ready to deal with repeating numbers yet.  I became a bit more satisfied with my educational limits but no less bored with the tedium of sequencing all the numbers I knew.

I don't remember finding out 101 came after 100 but I remember years later remembering that my mother's original answer made no sense and my assumption based on her answer was nonsensical as well.  So of course I asked my mother what in the world she meant by telling me a lot of nines came after one hundred.  But by then it was too late.  She had completely forgotten why she gave me that answer.