Do the math! 1+1=3!

A coworker was sharing with a group of us recently her date from hell. A high school friend had set her up on a blind date with a guy from her gym. The date started fine enough — my coworker learned that her date and her shared an interest in classic cars — but things went south when he was rude to the wait staff and ended with her spilling wine on her new outfit.

On paper my friend should’ve hit it off with her date, but the two ended up being oil and water. My wife and I have been married for close to thirty years, but I still remember my first blind date. Like my coworker’s experience, my blind date and I should have been a great match. We were both neat freaks and liked simple things.

Unfortunately, we got off to a rocky start and things never got better. When she gave me her number, I transposed the third and fourth numbers. When I figured out the problem, she had already moved on to multiplication and division and I was left in the dust.

Oh, I’m not talking about the dating scene or blind dates, I’m talking about math class. I should love math and the structure and organization that it brings. I should love the black and white nature of math and that there is always a right and wrong answer, which are both right up my alley. I should love that you need evidence for everything you put down on paper. Finally, I should love math because as my engineering, data science, and actuary friends like to tell me: It’s everywhere in life. It shows up in everything we see and touch.

Never the right answer

I get all those reasons, but my frustration with math started at a young age. I came home in tears one day in first grade frustrated that I couldn’t answer a problem that we were working on in school. I vaguely recall the teacher being frustrated with me for daydreaming in class, but I couldn’t complete the problem and I was scared to death.

I worked and worked on my homework and couldn’t solve it. I was adding when I was supposed to be subtracting, I was subtracting when I should have been adding. After coming up empty, I put away my homework and got ready for dinner. I didn’t say a lot, I sulked by myself and when dinner was done, I went straight to bed.

My mother must have known something was up. When she checked up on me later, tears of frustration came pouring out. She told me to grab my homework and we would see if we couldn’t figure out the answer together. Sure enough, my mom showed me what I was doing wrong. We went over the homework a few more times and then she rocked me in my favorite rocking chair, calming the last bit of anxiety percolating inside of me. (When I think of peace and calm today, that moment is the image I get in my head, my mom rocking me back-and-forth and me in my onesie-footed PJs. I think of that image today and I still get a tear in my eye.)

A short-lived achievement

I couldn’t’ wait to show the teacher. I ran into the classroom the next morning and pulled out my homework to prove that I could do the work. I forget her reaction, but I remember math’s dirty trick, just as I had finally figured out how to solve the problem, when it came time for math class later that morning, we were off to the races again learning something new. I didn’t even have time to savor my win. I was back to Square One and just as lost as before.

Oh, math we could have been great together! We could have been a great team. Unfortunately, it was never to be. Oh, I tried to keep a positive attitude about math. I even tried to get back in math’s good graces. I took advance classes and dared to ask math out on another date my senior year of high school. I thought I might catch her attention by taking Calculus, but it wasn’t to be. My love went unrequited, I barely survived in one piece, bringing home low Cs.

Of course, in time, I found other things to love, like English, history, and even science. They have all meant more to me than math. Thank goodness for choices! I’ve found my true loves and it’s not math!

“Number rules the universe.”

—Pythagoras

“As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in school.”

—Cokie Roberts