batabatuta blog

            Count me in. I can be your all against this big mad world of numbers. If you hate math and all that stands for, stand up and be counted.

            OO!!!galet ako sa math. And I’m mad at everything associated with it, numbers, calculators, math teachers, statistics, geometry, calculus, accounting, counting, abacus, mathematicians, units of measurements, rulers, plusses, minuses, and innumerable other things.

            Oddly, the feeling is mutual. Galit din ang Math sa akin.

            I have hated Math for as long as far as I remember. I hated it so much that I wouldn’t listen to nursery rhymes and childhood stories involving numbers. Who wants to count little Indians from ten to one and then back? Who needs one-two to buckle my shoe or three-four shut the door? Pardon me, but I would hate to sing a song of sixpence and find four and twenty blackbirds baked in my pie! I couldn’t care less what happened to Snow White’s seven dwarfs when she finally met her prince, and in my opinion the forty characters in Ali Baba’s tale should have been in jail because they are all thieves. I hated the guts of Sesame Street’s Dracula not because of his fangs but because he’s so illiterate that all he does is counting (tamaan sana siya ng kidlat!). If you ask me, I’d rather stay home than splurge my hard-earned salary on a trip around the world in eighty days.

            I long for the days when Math was represented by three apples, one banana or five balls I had to draw on a blank space on my test papers. Math then, life was simple. Simple computations via “My dear Aunt Sally” just as musical notes come in fat-eats-apple-during-good-climate monemnics.

            In school, an elective course taught me practical Mathematics from solving the interest of money deposited in a bank (whatever “principal times rate times time” means) to basic accounting (A-one, A-two, A-three…). This course was called Consumers Math and true enough, it consumed me. During the bonfire night, a week before graduation when we were instructed to let go of our bad memories by throwing to the fire everything we wanted to forget, I didn’t only burn my Math notebook, I also shouted “LONG LIVE MATHEMATICS!!!”(With matching tawang malakas talaga).

            Mas  worst ang mga sumunod na pangyayari. I become “MATHOPOBIC”. I was no longer the person I was but a mere statistic represented by my student number 2k2-1804-6 (punyeta..ayaw talaga akong tantanan ng numero!!!). I like my weird history teacher who after drinking three bottles of milk asked me, “Ano ba ang reality?” I also like my political science teacher who in the line with our lesson about colonial mentality ask me if I had ever done “SEX” in an American way, (pak-sheet naman sir, bata pa po ako..kotongan kita makita mo..haysz). But I never liked my Math teacher who every year, welcome me by saying, “oh! (with matching pa-cute effect pa,) IKAW na NAMAN!!!” and then kept insisting me for the nth time that the equation “zero plus zero equals zero”  can be proven by theorems and postulates. All I knew was if I had nothing and you had nothing then whether we put them together or not, we will still end up with nothing.

            Oh diyos naming patawarin mo po ako! But I wished all mathematical formulas were as easy to memorize as my viands at the house. And to think that grades were given in numbers (tama ang hinala mo tol, ang mga grades ko ay naggagandahang 70’s hehehe).

            Merong time nung nag-aaral ako that I had to take logarithmic! My tests scores were so “mean”, it couldn’t even reach the median. Thus, when my teacher assured me that the “drop-the-lowest-rule applied” (meaning grades would be computed based on our higher scores). I panicked. I immediately dropped the subject before my teacher dropped the lowest – AKO!

            Even now, everywhere I turn I still have to face numbers and count and die. I wake up everyday (after eight hours of sleep), do my routine exercise by the numbers, eat three basic meals, take so-and-so milligrams of food supplement, budget my money, wait in a bank until my number is called, ad infinitum.

            But who cares? I don’t count my change after I purchase anything (and I don’t see any difference anyway even if I do). And of course, I always take my vitamins before I sleep lest I be forced to count to sleep.

            Ang pagkatakot ko sa Math ay naging isang bangungot. I can even write a song about it. But since I’m not a musician too, borrowing the tune of Oscar the Grouch’s favorite “I Love Trash” for my “I Hate Math” song is a splendid idea. (Buntong hininga…haysz) Yes, my repulsion for math is equivalent to the value of a mathematical piano one will ever see its end.

            But then I remember that even Almighty is a mathematical mystery. One God in three divine persons, how can that be? Like the Holy Trinity. I believe with some amount of conviction that math equations should be left that way through all these unanswered. With religion in mind, I bluffed my way through all these by convincing myself that “MATH IS NOTHING but a ROMAN CATHOLIC thervith”.

            My sister insisted me that Math is essential. When you grow up, you’ll know she said to me.

            I’ve grown up and still growing up and still I cannot understand. In this aspect, my sister who is now a married woman. (buntong hiningang malalim na malalim).

            Well I’m a dreamer too (lalo na sa mga Math class na tinulugan ko at tinutulugan ko pa rin hanggang ngayon…sssshhh..wak ka maingay ka..) And I dream of really putting up an anti-Math society. I imagine that you and your allies will sign up, and our society will gather a huge membership. There will be politicians, musicians, illiterates, grammarians, abandoned youth and street children and like the stars and the sand they’ll be too many to be counted…..Hep..hep..hep..teka lang..ano ka mo???Magbibilang na naman???Anu kaya yun…Seems like there is no escaping this mad mathematical world.

            Be my ally. Count me out.