Pete's Expert Summary
My human has presented me with two small, sturdy boxes filled with… rectangles. According to the packaging, these are "Skill Drill Flash Cards" from a company called TREND, a name that implies they should know what's fashionable, though these drab illustrations of clocks and currency suggest otherwise. The purpose, as far as I can deduce, is to instruct small, clumsy humans on the abstract concepts of "time" and "money," two things I already have a masterful grasp on. Time is simply the interval between meals, and money is the crinkling sound that precedes the opening of a can. While the educational aspect is a complete waste of my superior intellect, the cards themselves are intriguing. They are described as "sturdy tagboard" with "rounded corners," which sounds perfect for batting across the hardwood floor. With 192 of them, the potential for creating a satisfyingly chaotic mess is quite high.
Key Features
- Identify U.S. coins and bills from 1₵ to $20.00 and compute combinations.
- Practice telling time in increments from 5 minutes to 1 hour. Learners match time to clock faces.
- Sturdy tagboard cards and reinforced cardboard storage boxes.
- Made in the USA for quality and product safety. The TREND brand has been trusted by teachers and families since 1968!
- 2 packs of 96 cards each. 3" x 6" no-see-through cards with quick-sorting, rounded corners.
A Tale from Pete the Cat
The boxes arrived with a dull thud on the kitchen table, a sound that rarely heralds anything of personal interest. My human, with an air of misplaced educational fervor, unboxed the contents, laying out the stiff, glossy cards on the living room rug. "Look, Pete," she cooed, "This one is a quarter, and this clock says it's three o'clock! That's almost dinner time!" I gave her a look of withering pity. I don't need a picture of a circle with two sticks to tell me when my stomach requires filling; I have a finely tuned internal chronometer that is far more accurate than any human device. I padded over, my initial disdain warring with a professional curiosity. The human was attempting to arrange the cards into neat rows. An exercise in futility, of course. I extended a single, perfectly manicured claw and hooked the edge of a card depicting a rather dour-looking man on a green slip of paper. With a flick of my wrist, I sent it skittering across the polished floorboards. The result was... magnificent. It slid with a whisper-quiet *shhhhffff*, its rounded corners preventing any unseemly snagging on the grout lines before it executed a perfect 180-degree spin and came to rest by the leg of the sofa. This was no mere educational tool; this was a complete, professional-grade floor-curling set. I ignored the human's sigh and proceeded with my work. The "time" cards, with their circular faces, had a slightly different aerodynamic profile, wobbling in a pleasingly erratic way. The "money" cards were heavier, better for distance shots. I batted one after another, creating a sprawling mosaic of fiscal and temporal chaos. I was not merely playing; I was conducting an elaborate physics experiment, testing the coefficient of friction of each individual piece of "sturdy tagboard." By the time I was finished, the living room floor was a masterpiece of kinetic art. The human had given up trying to teach her offspring and was just watching me, a small smile on her face. She didn't understand the complex science I was pioneering, of course. She just thought I was being "cute." Let her. The cards themselves, stripped of their pointless human symbolism, are objects of surprising quality and immense playability. The educational value is zero, but as a set of high-performance sliding tiles, they are an unexpected triumph. I shall permit them to remain. The empty boxes also make an excellent temporary beard-rest.
