NUMBERS AND I

NUMBERS AND I: My first encounter with numbers was in the first grade. Kindergarten was unknown unless you lived where there was a Montesori. Nope, not in 1950 Boise, Idaho. And Mom did not teach me to write my numbers, strange she was very progressive when it came to education. I remember my first grade class being asked to write number one through ten. I turned to a next desk classmate and whispered, “How to I make a six?” The next episode was in third grade at American Falls. I was tasked to put answer the clock hands and to write down the time. I got them exactly backwards. Even when I was told the correct answers, I was not convinced that they had the correct answer. Junior High at Parkview, I failed general math and had to take it again. If I had asked mom to tutor me I think I would have run away from home. The only time I was happy with math was in Algebra I. Somehow using letters as numbers helped me to turn the whole problem into a story that I could comprehend. The next class was Geometry. The teacher was a tiny Filipina named Miss Primativa Perez. She wore very high heels. She was not impressed with the big stupid Americans in her class. She told us that we all too lazy. The only thing that saved me was that she required that we write the theorems and describe the triangles. I took a lot of pride in typing the theorems, using red for numbers. I managed to get a C in that class. My next number difficulty was my first bank account. I wrote a check for rent and it bounced. I told the land lady that I had money in my account. It bounced two more times. I went to the bank and they explained that the monthly service charge was subracted from the account before the amount of the check. I went there to add enough to my account to clear all the charges, then I closed my account and opened an account at a Savings and Loan with a much better understanding of how a checking account worked. Oy!