You know what? I like math. I like that it is formulated, clean-slated, and consistent. When packing, there are no odd corners of things that end up not fitting in the truck with math (well, sometimes there are...but they have names for that). It reminds me of ice cube trays; there is a specific purpose and when used properly, they always work. Unless the freezer is broken. Or unless it is cracked. Or, unless it is out of context. If an ice cube tray were to be found one day by a woods person, who had never known civilization on the level of freezers and ice cubes, the piece of matter would be approachable, surely, but completely unknowable in the context of the woods. The ice cube tray, while in its habitat of civilization and freezers, functions perfectly, fluidly, and flawlessly. But in the woods, in the hands of a woods person, it is a mystery. It is unclassifiable. Its use and praiseworthy efficiency is lost for appreciation because it is miserably out of context and its miserable possessor has no knowledge of that context.
I am the woods person, sometimes. I am out of context of this ice cube tray. I can approach it, hold it, think about it, think of ways to use it...but to make sense of it, in these woods, is guesswork. People who know about ice cube trays either don't really live in the woods, or got told a secret that I didn't.
Math would leave the odd-cornered object on the curb. I would rather gather my sweater and suck up the cold and shove, senselessly if need be, to fit whatever angle didn't fit into the truck. For sentimentality's sake.
This is probably how I have come to be known as a non-linear, abstract, right-brain, gray thinker.
If I were Sia, I would be the alphabet; you can be the calculator. No thanks, buddy.
I like math. I can appreciate it. But in many ways math makes me want to cry and throw up...it heaps unexpectedly vivid memories of high school math class on my dining room table. Ever since college, I've thought that if I ever were to try to write a book and I needed an arbitrary model for an unusual character, I could always use the tendencies of many of the teachers I had in high school.
There was Miss Wigfall, in seventh grade..."Everyone together! 'To-diVIDE-by-a-NUMber-is-to-MULtiply-by-the..." What was that again? Reciprocal? And in ninth grade, I had Mr. Cao, for whom "You're gonna fail my test, Mallory" was a euphemism for hello. And Miss Fingerman...which I will not even joke about, because there is nothing funny about that memory. You may think I am being dramatic...and I can't blame you for that. In fact, the impact math has made on my life leads me to suspect that perhaps math itself is somewhat of a drama queen. And I can't say I really like it getting away with that, especially since it's supposedly so level-headed, and I'm one of the kids she likes to pick on. But, I'm going to let it go, because having math in my life has done a few good things. Being here, in the mid-afternoon on a weekday, staring into a math book in the room just off the kitchen reminds me of growing up, and home. It reminds me of a different side of what it feels like to be fourteen - wondering if maybe I'm a people person, and not a numbers person, because for some reason I just didn't get math when I didn't get my teacher. (I had a load of theories about why math was so difficult for me...many were less-edifying than this one). Remembering math comes simultaneously with remembering figuring it out...I was searching, rummaging ravenously during the years I spent in math class.
People always say, "back when I was growing up", as if growing up is ever done. I haven't had much time to think of that action as a thing of the past. But lately, I have begun to. I was growing up during those math-class years. I was going through lists of possibilities about who I would become, crossing off and trying and re-trying strategies about being. There is something so sweet about remembering that time now - not because it was a warm fuzzy time in my life...it wasn't really, because I wasn't...but what makes it worth the memory is that I am not that person anymore. I am wholly different...reborn. And I don't mean I've got myself all figured out or anything, or, in fact, that I've done anything. The figuring...the work...the peace that comes from ceasing the rummage for meaning, purpose, identity...all comes from the giver of life.
To me, math may be a decontextualized, plastic, unsentimental mean-girl drama queen that just doesn't know when to cut a poor woods person a break. But that's okay. Because math also, and more importantly, reminds me to re-live, and to then rejoice...and to PRAISE THE LORD because He gave me HIS identity for my own, rescuing me from my own stupid plans; taking away every trial and error I made in my account.
That's a good enough reason to study for this test, and to pass it. And after that even stay on good terms with math. Because even math can point my gaze to the greatest gift I've ever received.
No comments:
Post a Comment