Why I'm Like This: Math

   I do not recall having a poor relationship with math early on. I remember mom buying flash cards for multiplication and division, and that didn't help much, but it wasn't catastrophic. I just started breathing heavier and crying during timed math tests. In third grade. No big deal.
   In fourth grade is when I started to really understand that math hated me, and that I hated math, and by extension math teachers hated me. I will use her name because there is no chance she will ever read this: Mrs. Petrock. At Patterson Elementary. In my mind's eye she's fairy hippietastic with long dark brown hair and high waisted pants I called "elephant pants", but they did not have elephants on them, the were just a wide leg. They were always red or orange in my mind. I don't recall that she was particularly unkind to me, but as I mentioned above, I started struggling around third grade and I clearly had all the symptoms of what they now call "Math Anxiety". That did not exist in the 70's, they just figured you were stupid or distracted or both.

    I should mention here that, in the 1970's, there was this groundbreaking movement , the New Fabulous Idea, to put everyone in open pods. So all classes happened in taped off sections of an open pod. I do mean, open, not even wall dividers or rattan or paper Chinese privacy things. Open. Room. With 100 kids and four teachers. There was no way this could go poorly, as elementary students are not easily distracted by three other classes going on around them. Sarcasm, party of one.  When Mrs. Petrock  realized I could not function at the screaming fast pace of public school fourth grade math, her assessment was that I was distracted. As were the other 100 fourth graders in the massive pod, which contained a wading pool with crawdads in it for science class. But I was singled out , I suppose, because I was just that hideous at math. Or maybe my young, developing Resting Bitch Face I was nurturing to use as defense put her off. So she brought in a refrigerator box.
    I'll give you a minute.
    No, I am not kidding.
    I spent fourth grade math sitting in a desk, inside a refrigerator box. Cut off from my teacher whose job it was to teach me.  I was given worksheets, which I did not complete because the cardboard wall of the box could not explain the math on the paper to me. I wrote on the walls of the box.
    In fifth grade some other genius thought it'd be a good idea to create a single class combined of fifth and sixth graders, but not by IQ or drive or work habits, completely random. So my extended family took to thinking I was somehow smarter because I was in a combined class, but I suspect the reality was economic: they were short teachers. This is when I got to be with the beloved Mrs. Bengle, who in my mind was also my sixth grade language arts teacher. That year, for math, the New Fabulous Idea was to stop teaching math to the class, and instead give us worksheets. There was a file set up, and we would work our way through the packets in our own time. Mr. George was present for questions, but when you have no idea what the hell you are doing, it's difficult to formulate a question. He would tell me to read the directions again, and I still wouldn't get it. Sometimes a kind classmate would lend a hand, but for the most part I spent fifth grade math missing my refrigerator box. At least inside the box nobody could see me being stupid. But I did learn the definition of the word "virgin" from some boys who were bullying the girl who helped me, so I got that going for me.
   In high school, a teacher I won't name, actually asked me if I was stupid. By then I was failing pretty fantastically at everything, particularly algebra, for which I went to summer school. I did not learn algebra in summer school; I went to Alameda high school during the day, watched movies and got a passing grade for algebra. That was summer school back in the day. Unfortunately, you have to pass some kind of math to graduate from high school. After hitting the school's brand new desk top computer with a shoe because I couldn't log on, I was moved to the lowest math class GMHS had to offer. I was taught to balance my checkbook, fill out tax forms and other miscellaneous mathy stuff that was actually relevant.  I passed.
    In college I set about failing every math class I enrolled in, sometimes making it through the semester with an F, sometimes dropping halfway because the professor got tired of me crying. Jim tried to help  me with my homework once and I threw a book at him. It became clear that A)I had some serious math anxiety and B) math had no business adding letters to their formulas. I squeaked by some sort of low level math that didn't count for anything other than to qualify me to progress to the next round, where I continued to fail. Again, I was not going to graduate until I passed a math class of come kind. Thank God by then there was a class called "Computers In The Arts", in which I learned Excel spreadsheets and Word Perfect. By the way, I learned to write code, so the issue is NOT that I am stupid.
  Turns out what I am is dyslexic.
  I discovered the issue my freshman year of college in my child psych class. They were giving us tests to learn about various  cognitive skills and learning disabilities, and I failed the one for dyslexia. My prof acted like I knew.
   I did not.
   I wish I could say the diagnoses changed everything. HELP emerged, I was supported, tutored and led through the remainder of college by a handsome boy with glistening teeth and the patience of Job. All the self diagnoses did was get my psych prof to recommend that I stop taking upper level classes, because I needed the lower level ones first. Which had  nothing to do with dyslexia, I realize, but that was the only time my prof talked to me and I guess she needed to make sure she covered the bases.
    I am 53 years old and have never needed the quadratic equation. Why are we still teaching it? I did have to learn some accounting shenannegins back when I was an assistant manager of a record store, and I always screwed it up, but it wasn't algebra, or maybe it was. Now I stop breathing when I set up my grade book in infinite campus, because I'm supposed to have more than one type of grade, I guess...in theatre it was one grade, everything equal and 100% performance. Now it's supposed to be broken down into writing, tests, behavior...and it vexes me because I think I am supposed to assign value to each grade, and balance them somehow, but I don't. I broke them into four categories last semester, and never entered a grade in one of them because I forgot I'd created it. So this semester it's "tests" and that's it.
   It's fine, I'm fine.
   And so, all in all, to sum up, in conclusion, math sucks.
   Scene.