This lesson has been taught in many high schools across our country.

A teacher writes on the board: 9x1=9, 9x2=18, 9x3 =27, 9x4=36, 9x5=45, 9x6=54, 9x7=63, 9x8=72, 9x9=81, 9x10=91.

The students are laughing.

“Why are you laughing?” asked the teacher. They all point to the mistake he made with 9x10=91.

“Oh, so let me figure this out,” said the teacher. “I had the first nine problems right and no one congratulated me, but I got one wrong and everyone laughed because I made a mistake.” He went on to explain that we criticize people for their mistakes, but we fail to praise them when they are correct. I was guilty of that when I taught school. On a quiz, I’d mark wrong answers with a big X, but I did not mark right answers with a C for correct. We always have to highlight the mistake.

On the lighter side, a wife has to be away from home for the night so she asks her husband to vacuum the house, make dinner, check the kids’ homework, get them baths, put them to sleep, take the dog out for a walk and make the kids peanut butter and jelly lunches for school. She comes home and finds he made them ham sandwiches, which she says they don’t like. Rather than acknowledge that he did everything else satisfactorily, she lectures him about the one thing he did wrong. Comedian Red Skelton said, “All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner.”

We teach our kids it’s OK to make mistakes. Then our kids grow up and get jobs. Nineteenth century Scottish politician Henry H. Buckley said: “Mistakes are costly and someone must pay. The time to correct a mistake is before it is made. …”

Bosses are there to point out our mistakes, but then again, we might do nine things right and get no approval, but do one thing wrong and a stern lecture is what we get for the mistake we made.

Of course, there is another side of mistake making that brings to light that we should not take human error so seriously. Robert Bloch said, “The man who smiles when something goes wrong has thought of someone else to blame it on.”

Peanuts cartoon creator Charles M. Schulz said: “I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong.” An anonymous quote: “I learned so much from my mistakes, I’m thinking of making a few more.”

Here are more funnies, these mistakes made with the English language in public places:

• “Please satanize your hands here”

• “Please pay your parking fee before existing”

• “Today’s menu special “Seizure Salad”

• “Now on sale — A Christmas bag of threats — $25”

• Road work sign: “Thank you for your patients”

• “Restaurant tables are for eating customers only”

• “Please no smoking food or beverages in the clinic area”

• “No smoking aloud”

• Sign in state game lands: “Hunters use caution when hunting pedestrians walking on trails.

• Sign in a store that prefers to be unknown: “Shoplifters will be prostituted.”

I saw this poster in a store. “Making mistakes is better than faking perfections.” I don’t know one is better than the other, but I do know some people who have been faking perfection for a long time and are still doing it very well!

Ralph Waldo Emerson, my favorite writer, had this to say about how we should live our lives: “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can; tomorrow is a new day. Begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations to waste a moment on yesterdays.”

Don’t we all wish it was that easy. Psychologist Lisabeth Medlock has several lessons to learn from our mistakes.

Here are a few:

1. Making mistakes can lead us down the road of improvement and perseverance.

2. Our mistakes teach us that we’re not perfect. Nobody is. Mistakes are tools to help us overcome our fears as we travel though life.

3. Making mistakes helps us know what works and what doesn’t work.

4. Mistakes can be building blocks for the integrity for our character.

Of course, some mistakes we make cannot be fixed, so the objective is to not make them in the first place.

Here are a few mistakes you can’t “do over” to fix them. “Words after they’re said. Moments after they’re missed. Actions after they’re done. Time after it’s gone.”

If W E LIVE Hour lives, we make misssteaks. We probably will make a few every day that we have left to breathe on this planet.

Oh, so you saw that I made a boatload of spelling and grammar mistakes in the one short sentence above? But did you think I should be praised if the rest of my column was well-written, error-free English language? Well, there you go.

Try not to make any mistakes today. I’ve already made one, and it was writing this column!

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com