New Math Vent

I was teaching science in middle school. We were studying the elements. The question was, how many electrons in a particular element? The student answered "tons of them". She was pretty upset that I wouldn't accept that answer.

I have a friend that kept telling me that I wasn't "that heavy". I finally had to tell her my weight and she had the same reaction you got. "OH my God, I would have never guessed you weighed THAT MUCH!" It wasn't complimentary to me either. I know she was trying to let me know that I looked smaller to her, but all it did was point out how big I actually was. I know people try to be nice, but part of losing the weight is accepting the fact that you have a huge problem--no pun intended. Minimizing things or blowing things up and out of proportion is not helpful. It's difficult enough for us to accept the truth of where we've let ourselves get to. I need to deal in reality and stay away from fantasy. Take what other say with a grain of salt and keep trudging on and do what is right for you.

There are multiple usages of the word ton. A few of them are units of weight (and they're all slightly different), but there's also a somewhat informal use that means, "a large amount".

"I got a ton of work done today" doesn't mean I got 2000, 2240, or 2204 pounds of work done today.

Your friend was being nice. They were just using the language in a different way than you heard it.