I am 39 years old and I can not do math.
There are many people who believe you should never utter the words, "I can't" for if you do you are holding yourself back.
I am all good with being held back.
I first realized I could not do math the summer I turned 8 years old. My mother, being the good teacher she was, believed that children "lost so much knowledge" over the summer. (For the record, I do not entirely buy into this theory.) So, before school let out, she'd trekked over to the teacher store (they actually have these stores- the teacher store- filled with posters, classroom supplies, bulletin board boarders, workbooks, stickers, anything and everything a teacher could ever want) and bought my sister and I summer workbooks for reading and math. She came home and showed them to us, smiling as she said we'd have to complete one page from each book every day of our summer vacation. Every. Day. We would have to do math. Problems. This was certainly a problem for me. I probably started to cry right then and there, before the brown workbook had ever been open.
I dreaded the endless problems of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. The story problems, the symbols, the numbers- the whole lot of it, I just, despised. My mind never worked when it came to all those things. Numbers frustrated me, it was hard. They never worked right in my head. It took me FOREVER to solve simple problems. Forget long division.
And so there I sat, every day of my summer vacation, with my little legs sticking to the vinyl kitchen chair, doing math problems. My pencil rubbed tally marks and answers, only to be erased because they were wrong. What was wrong was that I was even sitting there, baking in our tiny kitchen, adding up numbers I did not even care about. If I'd known then what a calculator was, I would have snuck one in so at least I could get outside to enjoy some of the daylight.
To make matters worse, my sister was a whiz at math. She finished her problems with such speed and gusto, it made me hate math more. I am pretty sure her legs never had time to stick to the vinyl chairs.
By the time I got to junior high, I really hated math. In eighth grade, my teacher, Mr. Johan, would teach us algebra. By the end of May, all I knew about algebra was that you could call it "alge's bra" and that was thanks to the completely immature boy that sat behind me. Mr. Johan had no use for me because I was not good at math. He would fire graded papers back at us like missiles. (I think he secretly delighted in this, as he struck with such force, more so with the papers filled with redmarks- like mine. It is surprising I did not lose an eye that year.) At the end of the year, he told us what math class we would take in high school. I would be placed into the "fundamental classes". He was clearly disappointed; I was relieved.
In high school, I stayed in that fundamental track all four years. Those of us in that track (I interject to inform all those mortified by the term "tracked", that I turned out just fine, even after being labeled.) affectionately coined the term, "fun-for-mentals", for all our math classes. "Fun-for-mentals" geometry 1, "fun-for-mentals algebra 2 and so on.
My sophomore year, one quarter, there was a big fat F on my report card for "fun-for-mentals" geometry. Obviously, I was not having so much fun in that class. I tried to explain to my parents (who kindly let me live after getting an F on a report card) that slopes of lines and names of shapes and pie X radius squared (Ha! And you were beginning to think I'd learned nothing!) really did not matter. I tried. They did not believe me and therefore, I spent the next quarter of my life in complete and total math hell. I can not even type about it, it takes me back to such a bad place.
Once in college, I knew there would be more math classes to take and unfortunately, my university did not offer "fun-for-mentals" level math classes.
Then came the first day of math methods. Methods classes are for education majors. In these classes, you learn to teach all the different subjects. Since I was an elementary school major, I would have to learn to teach math. I am pretty sure there is not a point in my life that is a bigger oxymoron.
My professor was in love with math. In love. She was a beautiful woman who dressed to the nines, had nails painted shades of deep red (which often reminded me of Mr. Johan's graded paper missiles), and spoke in a grand voice about the wonders of math. She was high on math. Every day.
Her task, so she told us, was to show us all these fabulous new ways to teach math. Clearly, I had missed something- new ways to teach a subject thousands of years old? In a great flurry, she would present these methods and everyone else in the class would scribble away in their notebooks, while I sat there completely dumbfounded thinking, "What in the great hell have I gotten myself into?" She'd assign problems for us to solve and walk around to look at everyone's work. My paper- blank. Her expression- annoyance.
Math methods got so bad I had to have my boyfriend tutor me. He was a mechanical engineering student. All the people at his university loved math. He loved math. Everyone at that point in my life loved math. I was a complete and total outcast.
Somehow, I managed to pass math methods and soon found myself standing in front of my own classroom! Of sixth graders. Who would need to be taught math. I truly do not know how, but I managed to teach them math. One of my former students from that class recently told me that I'd taught it so well. I told her it was all smoke and mirrors.
Eventually, I became an eighth grade English teacher and never thought about math again. Occasionally, in study halls, students would ask me to help them with their math. My response was, "I do not speak math." They'd giggle and show me their problems. I'd say, "Yep. That is a problem," and walk away to find them a math teacher.
Then, I became a mom. Not long after we brought our sweet baby girl home, my husband and I sat in the living room, gazing at her and discussing her future. We talked of when she'd go to school and what her experience would be like. We laughed about how I would never be able to help her with her math homework. We made a deal, right then and there, a promise, that he would help her with all her math homework and I would help with all her English homework.
A deal and a promise, breezily made, but one which I took completely to heart. I knew then that I did not want my daughter to know the frustrations, the aggravations, the disappointments, the resentments I had known about math. I was relieved that she would have someone with her, helping her, guiding her, and sharing his love of a subject with her.
My daughter is now in third grade.
And her Dad is not here to help with her math homework. I am.
If you know nothing about current third grade math, let me sum it up for you by telling you that the teacher has to send links to tutorials every night for parents so that they can learn how to do the math. Every night. Tutorials. For the parents. Who went to third grade.
I watch the tutorials. I listen to the methods. I see what is happening on the screen. My eyes begin to blur. My ears fill with fog. And my body fills with hate.
Not hate of the subject, hate of my ex-husband.
It is the first time, in five years, I have hated him. Truly hated him with every ounce of my being. All the wrong he did, all the pain he caused, all the things we have had to endure because of him, and now I truly hate him because he left me here to do math problems. He broke his promise. And that is a problem.
My sweet girl looks at me, sees me watching those tutorials, listens to me shouting about how in my day math was not like this, and says, "It's ok, Mama. I can help you." Sweet baby Jesus, how did I ever get such a good little girl?
I can't say that one day I will love math. But I can say that I love helping my daughter with her math homework. Even though I still don't get it.
*This is for Cindi. Thank you for getting me to write again, friend.
