If the school year ends on May 21st,
and you have waited until April 22nd to call me,
AND your child has failed every test this semester,
it is mathematically impossible for them to get a “B”.

Thank you for you kind attention to this matter.

Surrounded as I am by people immersed in the practice of math and science, no one really understands the fact that whenever I see any kind of numerical statement or mathematical equation, my brain processes this information in the same way it would if everyone around me spontaneously started speaking in tongues. Which is to say, not at all. Seriously, the world might as well be run by The Great Gods Of Random Syllable Generating for all the pathetic lack of understanding I can muster when faced with math.

I’ve been pretty much resigned to my solitary fate, but then the other day I saw a billboard that gave me a tiny glimmer of hope. Unfortunately, despite the hour I spent driving up and down I-285 last weekend, the actual physical billboard seems to have disappeared into The Ethers Of Stuff That My Engineer Husband Will Probably Accuse Me Of Making Up. But I swear; this is what it said:

√ 7,000,000 /Pie x Yellow=

And I thought, “YES! Somebody understands me and my pain!” Because that is what every single math problem since the 8th grade has looked like to me.

Now granted, it was a Chick-Fil-A billboard, with the cows telling all who passed by that they had to solve this equation before they could eat a burger.

But STILL. For that one moment, I was no longer alone.

Me (to a tutoring student): So, what else are you working on these days?

My student: Well, I have to do a math rap in class tomorrow.

Me: ……

My student: I’m doing it to “Amazing Grace”.

My student: “Oh, pa-ra-le-el lines,…”

Me: That’s…just…so wrong.

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My husband and I are in charge of cooking the turkey this year for Christmas. We brine it before we bake it, so I emailed the recipe to my mom so that she could buy the brine ingredients ahead of time.

When we arrived at my parents’ house yesterday they took us out to lunch, and in the car on the way home the talk turned to turkey.

“I got a 10-pound bag of ice. Is that enough?” asked my mom.

“Well let’s see. It’s a math problem,” responded my husband.

“Aaarrrggghhh!!!” I yelled, grabbing my head in agony.

“A pint’s a pound the word around,” began my husband.

“Yep, there went my frontal lobe,” I announced.

Eventually-and a long and painful eventually it was-they reached the point in their conversions that they’d been aiming for all along: how many ounces are in a gallon?

“I thought there were 16 ounces in a gallon,” said the accountant.

“No, there are 64 ounces in a gallon,” said the math teacher.

“No-oo,” there are 128 ounces in a gallon,” said the engineer.

“And there goes the temporal lobe. Damn math!”

Yesterday I tutored one of the eleventy-thousand high school students who have a Spanish exam. After we had finished and I was walking him to the door he said, “Man, I can’t wait until next semester when I get to start fresh with a brand new 100 in Spanish!”

“Um, not to burst your bubble or anything,” (Liar, liar pants on fire! Anytime anyone says that, that is of course exactly what they want to do!) I said, “but that’s not actually true. You don’t start each semester with a 100, and then your teacher takes points away from you. You start each semester with a zero, and then everything you do earns points towards your grade.”

Imagine a baby, sitting in a field of golden sunshine, surrounded by tiny butterflies, happily playing with a ball while puppies and kittens look benevolently on. Then imagine that you stride up to that baby, smack that ball right out of its hands, and start yelling at it, for no reason. Imagine the expression on that baby’s face when, smack in the middle of all of that goodness, it discovers that such wretchedness and misery exists in this world.

That’s pretty much what this student’s face looked like after I’d finished breaking this news to him. So if you heard any cosmic shrieking yesterday, or sensed any rending in the fabric of the universe, don’t worry. It was only me, shattering the illusions of the young and the innocent.

And incidentally, this is exactly why I majored in words.