Soapbox

It’s All Greek to Me

September 2003
So I’ve got this kid…and he comes home yesterday with the first homework of his junior year. I remember being a junior in high school (I do! Honest!) and in fact I got pretty good grades that year, so flush with triumph from having pointed out to Katie that the capitol of Canada is not Ontario but Ottowa, I felt I was clearly up to the task. He flung down his bag and announced that, for his science class he had to go to a fast-food restaurant and observe for 20 minutes. Eyes were rolled at the abject stupidity of it all.
“There’s no way they’ll let you stand there and watch for 20 minutes!” he complained.
” ‘Course they will” I said dismissively.
“No, they won’t. And it’s not just me: and most of the class seemed to feel that way too, mom.”
I detected a distinct huff in his attitude. The gauntlet was down.

“Well Steve, suppose you walk up to the counter but stand over to the side, so you’re out of the way of the ordering line. When they ask if you need help you say something like ‘Not yet- I’m waiting for someone’ Then you watch what goes on. If they keep looking at you, you make a show of checking your watch and looking out at the parking lot. After 20 minutes you “give up” and order some fries and leave.”
The look on his face told me that he was thinking, “That’s just dumb enough- it might work!” He seemed impressed. Well sure, because moms know everything!

OK, not quite.

I told him I’d take him to Wendy’s and we’d just eat dinner there.
“And when we get back, I need you to help me with my pre-calculus” he said. I looked around to see to whom he was talking.
“What…you mean ME?”
“Well… you’ll know what this stuff is about.” he assured me. What? Not if YOU don’t, pal!
So we hung out at Wendys for a half hour and despite the previously stated impossibility of the task, he completed his assignment. When we got back he showed me this equation-thingy that the teacher gave them to figure out what was wrong with it. I watched him write:

If x=1 and y=1… Then yy = yx. Hey, I get that! So far, so good.

-y² = -yx … Ok

It went downhill rapidly from there. Soon I was face to face with

(x+y) (x-y) = x(x-y) and started to sweat.

“Well here’s your problem: it’s written in some ferrin language” I said. “You call that math? Look at that- there ain’t even hardly any numbers in it!”
“Ha ha. You’re a laugh riot. Please concentrate, mom! I need help.”
Oy. you’re in trouble, son.

So basically he talked me through it, and he found the step in the series that wasn’t equal, but couldn’t explain why. So because I am a reasonably intelligent person, after choir practice I had Ted look at it. There was a lot of “Oh man, I used to know…â€? and “crap, what was the…â€? and I could almost hear the creaking of his rusty brain cells, but suddenly he said,
“Ah! Steve- here, how did you reduce from this step to this one?”
“Umm, divide each side by x-y”
“Uh huh, and in this case, what does x-y equal?”
“Zero…and…oh…oh yeah! “
“And you can’t divide by zero!” I said, happy that SOMEthing at last had been said that I understood! When I looked at it later, over a bowl of ice cream with peaches (which may have helped) I heard a creaking in my own head and started remembering about multiplying or dividing both sides of an equation by the same thing to reduce it, but man, I couldn’t see it on my own. I had gotten hung up on trying to remember how to multiply two parenthetical sets, (which I taught him how to do in Algebra back in 8th grade) and couldn’t get past it.

And this was day 1 of pre-cal! The boy hopefully learned something valuable and hereafter will ask his Dad for homework help in math, and let me handle the normal, sensible stuff, like his “Banned Books” or “U.S. in Foreign Relations” class. I’ll get him an “A” in that one. Not that it makes any sense either, these days.