"Math is hard."--Barbie and Karla May

I blame it on Mrs. Blankenship and House Bill 72.

I had always been good at math and been in gifted and talented or advanced classes as long as they'd been offering such a thing. That is, until I drank the deadly cocktail of 9th grade algebra + a shitty, impatient teacher. To cut her a wee bit of slack, she may not have been shitty or impatient if it hadn't been for the Texas legislature's recent passing of HB 72, better known as the "no pass, no play" bill (and the beginning of the "teach for the test" bullshit the Texas public school system can't rid itself of today). You see, besides making sure athletes had to have passing grades in order to take the field (which should've been happening all along, but hey, this is Texas, and we love our football!!), one of the things this bill did was determine these "essential elements" for every grade, every class. These were things that teachers HAD to cover in any given school year, and if they didn't (and couldn't prove through their templatized lesson plans and statewide test scores that they'd done so), they could lose their jobs and the funding for entire school districts could suffer.

Maybe I've got the facts wrong, but this is the way it was explained to me when I dared to fall behind in 9th grade algebra. There were concepts in algebra that I just could NOT get. This was very alarming and stressful to me, as I'd never EVER struggled--even slightly--in any other classes before. Except for P.E., but that's because I was a spaz.

But I digress...

I fell behind and would raise my hand to ask for a problem to be explained or re-explained, and Mrs. Blankenship wouldn't even try to hide her exasperation with me. "Come ON, Karla May. You're holding up the class. This is an essential element, and we've got to cover it today. This train has left the station, and the rest of us can't wait around on the caboose." That's right people: the bad permed bitch called me a "caboose" in front of the entire class. More than once. I was fourteen and mortified. She made me feel stupid. Really, really stupid. I finally just quit raising my hand, and cried through my homework every night. I struggled through the rest of the year, and barely managed a "B." I ended 9th grade absolutely math-o-phobic and wanting to disembowel Mrs. Blankenship and the entire state legislature.

The next year was geometry, which I was dreading. But at least it was "normal" math, not advanced math anymore. So now I was with other kids who might hate math and be just as dumb as me. Perhaps that meant I wouldn't be the only "caboose" in class. But something magical and totaly unexpected happened: I got geometry. Somehow the spatial relationships and proofs made perfect sense to me, and I sailed through class with an easy A. Fuck you, essential elements. Karla May was back, and confident. I loved geometry, and didn't feel like a huge dumbass anymore.

Then came Algebra II, and of course I found myself back in the conceptual Hell that I'd thought I'd left behind in 9th grade. And why? Because I'd never really learned Algebra I in any real way, plus I was scared shitless of it. So I spent yet another year crying through my homework and freaking the fuck out while the rest of my friends were mastering Trig and Calculus. My caboose ass somehow managed to squeak a "B" out of Algebra II, but just barely.

My senior year? I took "computer math," which was some BASIC programming on first generation Apple computers. The class was filled with potheads and jocks, and served as the last nail in the coffin of my one time love affair with math.

Fast forward to my (second) senior year in college. I met with my graduation counselor at the beginning of the school year to make sure I'd covered all of my graduation requirements--my "essential elements" if you will--and guess what: I lacked a math credit. Yep, it's just like those recurring nightmares you have where you've suddenly found out you have a test and realized you never went to the class. FUCK. ME. I was a fucking math-o-phobic English/Drama double major with a bad case of senior-itis. I could barely do the math required to balance my checkbook--even with a calculator. And now I was going to have to take a fucking MATH class to graduate when I hadn't taken math since 11th grade?! Jesus H. Christ. My counselor calmly advised me to take the misleadingly titled "Applicable Math for Liberal Arts Majors." I thought, "Oh awesome! I'm going to learn how to do my taxes and figure out how much I should invest in my 401(k)! Yipee!" But guess what kids--it was algebra. Straight up. And to put the mustard on top of this shit sandwich, it was taught by an Italian T.A. whose accent was so thick he sounded like one of the Mario brothers, and I couldn't understand a goddamned word he said. God it sucked. Again, I busted my ass to just try and pass the fucker. The only smart thing I did during this time was schedule to take the GRE because I figured, hey, I'd better take that thing when I was in the throes of a semester that included a math class because, as soon as that fucking semester was done, I planned on hitting "Erase" and forgetting everything I'd learned and/or bonging myself into oblivion.

But again, I digress...

Fast forward about 80 years to the present day: I STILL fucking hate math. Everyone who knows me knows this. Don't ever ask me to to figure out how to split a bill at a restaurant. I don't count change, so you could pretty much rob me blind, and I wouldn't know it. I haven't balanced my checkbook in over a decade, and I've still never done my own taxes.

Today, Jaye and our friend Jimmy and I were trying to figure out how to split the bill at lunch. For some reason, I was the one with the pen and paper trying to figure who owed what before tip after tax. Once again, I was in Mrs. Blankenship's class, afraid to raise my hand. But at least I wasn't the only one. It took the three of us about 20 minutes to figure it out, and we even had a calculator!! Our waiter actually asked if we'd been drinking because we all seemed so confused.

So congratulations, public education system. And fuck you, Mrs. Blankenship, wherever you are.