Critical Math

i've always been bad at math. i mean...really, really bad.

in grammar school, i was that kid who had the perpetually lost look on his round little face when the teacher would talk about integers, long division without remainders and anything to do with fractions. the only mathematically concepts i ever grasped in grammar school were roman numerals. high school was even worse, when we got onto algebra and trigonometry. the only thing i learned was to dread math class as much as gym. numbers became a language i never fully grasped; completely expressionless and devoid of passion, like Chinese or Korean. it lacks poetry, expression or emotion. i struggled through, for three years, barely passing every term and then opting not to take it my senior year. when i did graduate, it was without a New York State "Regents" diploma (i failed all three exams). i fared a little better on the SATs, somehow pulling a 500 out of my ass on the second try. my awful HS grades and pitiful performance on the SATs landed me in "Math Appreciation" my freshman year of college (it was a rehash of everything i failed to learn in HS). that was the last math class i ever took, and boy am i glad. ironically, though, i've stumbled into a job where i'm dealing with numbers all day long; calculating interest and dividends and holding back for accumulating debits. thankfully, Microsoft has a trusty calculator built into all it's Windows packages.

the reason i bring this up is because, at lunch today Squirt attempted to teach me some "new math". Specifically, the NYS Board of Ed's newest way of teaching multiplication to NY's youth. it took her all of 10 minutes and she used the back of a TGI Friday's placemat and a red crayon. i'm not sure how she did it, but she mulitplied 70 and 80 using a box split into four quardants. when the smoke cleared she had the right answer, but i'll be damned if i know how she did it.

much like when she attempted to explain the way Major League Baseball is set up, she tried to explain how she got her answer (5600), but no matter how she explained it...it didn't make sense. call me old school, but it seemed a bit frivolous to move beyond the basics (7 x 8 = 56; tack on the two 0's and you have 5600). she assures me, however that any other way to multiply is simple de classe and hopelessly retro.

next week she's going to explain fractions at Applebees using suger packets and toothpicks. till then, i'll stick with my trusty calculator and a hefty sense of inferiority.

"Let's stay in tonight/Maybe disconnect the phone/The correct arithmetic/Just two of us at home"~One and One Make Five (the Pet Shop Boys)