Back when I was in school, I hated math. I hated numbers. They made my brain tired and I would be the first one to admit it. At that time, you only needed one math class to graduate. It was before the country became all gung ho on science and math and desperate to catch up with the rest of the world and be able to compete. The concept of math and numbers never came easy to me.
To be fair, I never failed math in the history of time. I struggled. It wasn’t an easy A for me. I got B’s and C’s in math. It was hard to comprehend. Hide a math problem inside a small cryptic paragraph and I was completely lost. That became even more the case by the time freshmen Algebra was on the agenda. I was in a state of confusion from the get go.
Once again not only did equations and expressions hit me head on with unknown variables but once again some smart a$$ decided it was necessary to include story problems in the mix. G0d help me! On top of that I had a complete witch for a math teacher that year which didn’t help matters one bit. She was far more interested in spending time in the hall than teaching Algebra. G0d help you if you didn’t get it the first time around and didn’t happen to be a cheerleader or some popular jock. If you were like me and fell into the category of being invisible and not one of the beautiful people plus were clueless to where to begin to solve anything, you were on your own and screwed. She had no time to deal with the likes of me. I was so confused by the whole thing I didn’t even know what questions to ask.
My mom being the math wizard she was tried to help me. She had the knack of always getting the right answers. The only problem was she didn’t use the same procedure to get the answer as the teacher so in my teacher’s mind it was wrong even though the answer was correct. It was maddening!! Finally parent teacher conferences rolled around and my mom was fed up. She dragged me to parent teacher conferences and gave that woman a good telling off in front of G0d and everyone. You could have heard a pin drop in that cafeteria as every other teacher and parent turned to stare.
I would like to say my mom’s tirade did the trick, but it didn’t. I avoided math like the plague for the rest of high school. To my utter shock and dismay when tested for placement in an appropriate college math course at Belmont, I was placed in College Algebra. I had not had the background in high school math that was prerequisite so I am not sure how I managed that. It was in college that I finally came across professors dedicated to breaking through that black hole between my ears. I left college with A’s in classes I was required to take.
Since I’ve become an adult I have discovered I use math all the time. Numbers are everywhere!! Whether I am figuring out how many hours it will take my husband to get from A to B or figuring out how to stretch the all mighty dollar to pay bills, buy groceries, put a little go-go juice in the Blazer, and get everything we need until the next payday, I use numbers constantly. To my utter shock, both of my kids have proved themselves to be gifted in math. I wonder how that happened!! So far I am happy to say I have had enough brains to figure out any questions they have had, although I know that won’t always be the case. Maybe in the future they will unlock the complete mystery of numbers that has always eluded me. To my everyday surprise, numbers continue to be apart of my every day life and even more shocking I seem to know what to do with them! I have no idea how that happened but I am relieved it finally did until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.
