This could start as some dyslexic math problem. As a young student, I found the subject of math to be boring, infuriating, useless beyond addition and subtraction and an ill-equipped replacement for words (129 v. one hundred and twenty-nine). 

I learned a new word the other day: innumerate. As in: illiterate: cain’t reed or no eny werdz :: innumerate: 1+1= 6? 11? 1? I don’t really believe I’m innumerate ( I can add and subtract and divide numbers but that’s about as far as my train goes on the tracks of math).

The two teachers (nuns, both) who “taught” me math, Sister Corona in the 4th grade and Sister Mary in the 7th grade; witches, both. Of them I was fearful, anxious, cowed and embarrassed. They were of German descent, and it took little imagination to imagine them in another time as Nazi prison guards or Gestapo overseeing psychological torture.

I never was able to sleep on a school night when math was the next day, especially when we were assigned “word problems” homework. You know, the old: “If Danny was headed northeast to Chicago and would arrive at 6pm driving 60 miles an hour, and Charlie drove 1/5 mile per hour slower starting from someplace in Canada with poor signage, what was Danny wearing? Wtf?!

Did I miss a secret clue? Did I need a slide ruler? I’ll tell you what Danny was wearing: prison stripes because he shot a nun that taught him math in the 4th grade. Good for you, Danny!

So much time of sleepless nights, and adult therapy might have been avoided if I only knew then that there’d come a time in the distant future where anyone could “do” math, with the help of the objectively aloof “Mr. Googlees” and the “Interwebs”    .