Acalculia: My Misadventures In Mathematics

Don’t get the wrong impression; I respect and revere my mom’s math skills, however when it came to the genetic distribution of qualities, along with my dance moves and love of Swedish garage-rock, I inherited my right brain from my mathematically-challenged dad.

I’d always had an inkling that I was a substandard mathematician, but my suspicions were confirmed beyond doubt sometime around the fifth grade, when it became apparent that whenever my teacher asked me to long-divide, I either had a conniption or wet myself. I didn’t see the point in creating sprawling, page-filling scribbles when as humans had already created a machine that could do it much more efficiently and without killing as many trees in the process.

The odd combinations of numbers and letters incited a resentful confusion in me; I didn’t know why any of the formulas created their patterns, I disliked the absence of all creativity, and to this day, when asked by my patient and well-meaning tutor, “Adrienne, do you know why we just used the factoring theorem?” I generally respond with “Because you hate me.”

I’ve accepted the fact that when it comes to math I am a rare and exotic type of stupid. I’m sure I’d be a better writer or artist than engineer or accountant anyway. Heck, I’d probably be a better Rabbi or vampire hunter too. However, my relentless mother has my own benefit in mind and doesn’t want me to wind up spending my life painting mythical creatures and living in a studio above an adult video store with a boy named Cricket.