Sunday Newscape Magazine

As I’ve admitted more than once, I’m a lover of language, a connoisseur of written communication. I’m a librarian’s dream. I read the dictionary for pleasure. If you’re looking for a word weenie to hang out with, I’m your girl. Let’s get together and read (no talking allowed).

The only problem with having a skull stuffed with syllables is that there’s very little room for anything else, especially anything as annoying as numbers. I have to tell you, I hate numbers. They are so logical, so concrete, so rigid, so rational. Who needs that? Most of the time, I function quite well without the nuisance of numbers. I leave them alone, and they leave me alone – it’s a very satisfactory arrangement, kind of like the arrangement I have with snakes. I am slightly less fond of numbers than I am of snakes, but being a warm-hearted word weenie, I’m willing to extend to them the same courtesy.

Except, that is, during the school year, when our educational system has the gall to teach my children math. Simply having a math textbook cross my threshold causes hives to break out all over my body. The only effective treatment for this condition is to read several pages of the dictionary. So when my kids have math homework, I’m an itchy, hive-ridden, dictionary-reading mess. And if they ask me for help with that homework, I have to interrupt my reading (and my scratching) and pretend to know something about the subject.

In this attempt, I am doomed. You may be thinking this is because I am a numbers newbie who can barely remember how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, much less get my head around ludicrous concepts such as algebra and geometry (I got a bunch more hives just typing those awful words). But you would be wrong. It’s not because I’m hopeless when it comes to math. It’s because math teachers have conspired to make parents like me feel stupid by changing all the terminology. So when, for example, you tell your first or second grader to “carry” and “borrow” while doing addition and subtraction, your child will temporarily look at you like you’re an idiot because no one uses those terms anymore in math. The teachers are actually doing all of us a favor here, helping to prepare us for the teenage years when our children will look at us like we’re idiots all the time. But that doesn’t change the fact that the math mavens, not content with inflicting hives on us with their numbers, have been encroaching into word-weenie territory by fooling around with language. This can no longer be tolerated.

Now, I’m not trying to belittle our noble and hard-working math teachers. Someone has to be good with numbers. There are simply not enough dictionaries to go around. And I’ll admit that math teachers (like all teachers) have a very tough job. My math teachers are still in therapy hoping to get over the trauma they experienced trying to educate me. So, to give them (and us) a break, I’m suggesting we send our math teachers to Washington, DC and Wall Street. There are apparently people in those two places in desperate need of someone who has a mastery of mathematics. The teachers can attempt to communicate the true meaning of old financial words like borrow (as in money) and carry (as in debt). Or they can mimic the natives and carelessly throw around terms like billion and trillion. More than likely, no one will pay any attention to them. It’s all just words and numbers, after all.

Maybe I’ll send along a dictionary. I’m pretty sure I’m going to eventually have to send in a check.

© Jackie Papandrew 2008, All Rights Reserved www.jackiepapandrew.com