Liz’s rant: The numbers game

I realize that as you read this, blood may very well shoot out of your eyes. But in the interest of getting the word out on what I’ve come to refer to as “bubble math,” I can’t help it. At this point, I can’t even muster a “sorry about the bloody eye thing.”

It started innocently enough last week, during a routine homework assignment. But as I would learn, things were about to take a spiral into the abyss I will simply refer to as the numbers game.

They call it mental math. I call it insane.

This new mental math takes, for example, this scenario: 93-42. (It always starts so innocently, doesn’t it?) First you subtract the numbers in the 10s spot, leaving you with 5,  then you subtract the number in the ones spot, leaving you with 1. The answer? Clearly 51. But the problems got more complicated. For example, let’s use 53-47. Now, unless you round up the 47 to 50, you’re gonna land on the wrong answer. Assuming that’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s hard to say.

Anyway, it was at that point in the assignment when homework took a decidedly -wickedly – bad turn for the worst.

I began by writing the problem down on paper, just like I had done in grade school, where the bigger number was on top, the smaller on the bottom. We started in the ones column – always. And everyone knew you couldn’t take 7 from 3. You had to borrow from the 10s spot, making the 5 a 4, and the 3 a 13. Which had Colton looking at me as if I’d just landed from Mars.

So I took my other avenue – the way my brain was plugged into math. First I took the number 47, immediately deducing that 7 plus 6 equals 13. So 47 plus 6 equals 53.

“But that’s not what my teacher said to do,” Colton said.

“Yes, dear, I realize that. But what you fail to realize is this is making my head spin.”

I briefly pined for his days in first grade, when I was so naive to think his school days would be as sweet as Dr. Seuss. The reality was this math homework would have a certain third-grade teacher going crazy with her red pen if we didn’t figure it out.

So back we went to the stupid little bubbles, with me trying to explain that sometimes you could subtract the 10s numbers from each other, and other times you had to round up… I think… or the answer would remain elusive. Just as elusive as the bubble math was to me.

Then came a eureka moment: “I know what I’m doing now,” said my insistent third-grader. And I was happy about that. Except for the fact that I’d gone for the calculator, now. Unable to tell him whether his answer was right, wrong, or even a real number. Which is where I need to tell you how much I’ve always hated math.

My head hurt, the eraser was running on its last leg, and the fear of future math homework rendered me unable to remember my own name.

Except to say that in all the fog, one thing is clear: I’m failing third grade math.

-Liz