The Math Closet

I’d like to think that I’m good at expressing myself. Not verbally, mind you, but on paper I’m a pro. Give me a topic and some paper and let me go. I’m not saying that it’s always wondrous, but what I come up with is at the very least interesting. Which is more than a lot of people can say.

Not that I’m picking on anybody. Because you know what? I’m really bad at math. I always have been. Numbers confuse and overwhelm me with frightening ease. Growing up, I was never really very exception in school. My grades were pretty much right down the middle—average vanilla. On paper I looked like a dolt, one of those boring people who grow up to manage a drug-store.

Of course, I could never manage a drug-store…I’m too bad at math for that.

When I was in elementary school, my parents were class room “volunteers.” One of the tasks they were given was, believe it or not—grading papers. My mother would sit up late at night with a big stack of math worksheets and grade my classes’ papers. She would make her way through the stack, and before I could finish a glass of chocolate milk, she’d be tutting and shaking her head at me.

“Oh, Jason,” she’s say holding my latest attempt at division. “You can do better than this.”

So I’d often get to do my class work twice. Once in class and again later at home after it had been half-graded. My poor mother would hover over my shoulder—answer key-in-hand. Thankfully, my mother quit grading my math homework once I changed schools. But by fourth-grade, I was a real loser when it came to math. When my family relocated to a richer, nicer Missouri suburb, my parents were overjoyed to have their kids in one of the best school districts in the State. I was told over and over that my new school was “better” than my old one.

And it was. There was air conditioning and we had two different playgrounds! There was also a different approach to teaching in this “nicer” school. At the beginning of the year, we were all given a mathematics aptitude test. This test, we were told, would place us into special classes where our own individual needs would be addressed.

Children who were better at math would be placed and in a special “accelerated” class, where they wouldn’t be held back by the kids who weren’t as good at math.

Kids like me, who couldn’t add and subtract without using the “magic dots” that I was taught back in my “poor school.”

The "magic dots" are imaginary dots that one can use to help you add and subtract. For example: the number one has one dot. The number two has two. These dots were placed usually at the “joints” of a numeral. The number two had a dot at the “beginning” and the “end,” where your pencil would touch and then leave the page as you scrawled the number. As a result of this rather ridiculous system, my math homework was covered with little flecks of graphite, where I’d nervously tap my pencil.



This system greatly hampered my ability to take the “timed tests” of my new “rich” school. Unlike the other kids, who’d been taught memorization, I was forced to use my tactile method. The process was slow, very, very slow. Not only was I nearly always the last one to finish these timed tests, but often the room would be empty when I did so. My classmates were outside at recess or at art class. Once, I was forced to sit out of a special movie because it took me the length of the animated version of “Charlotte’s Web” to finish my test.

This was, as you can imagine—embarrassing. But nothing was as embarrassing as the “math closet.”

You see, my math aptitude test put me in a special group. There were five of us total, and we were the worst of the worst. Like a “Dirty Dozen” of dunces. The rest of the fourth-grade was divided up into four classes. Once a day, we’d all break off into our math groups and have a separate math classes. Each group met in a different room. Separate but equal (my ass).

My group, the dunce group didn’t meet in a classroom and we didn’t have a regular teacher. Instead, we had a "student" teacher, a pretty college girl who looked both excited and terrified to be dealing with us. Our class was conducted in, I shit you not—a fucking broom closet.

The student teacher (whose name eludes me) had a dry erase board leaning against one of the closet walls. We (the five of us) sat cross-legged on the cold tile floor and stared dumbly up at her as she tried to teach us basic math.

I’ve been in remedial math classes every since.

I don’t blame my parents or the “math closet” for my lack of math skills. Every since I can remember I’ve been bad at math, it’s just a fact of life for me. Like how I have blue eyes or brown hair. I don’t think any of the schools I went to could have changed it for me either, except perhaps for my first elementary school, who taught me that crippling “magic dot” bullshit.

They weren't the cause necessarily, but they sure as hell didn't help.

In Junior High, the remedial math classes were full of burnouts, druggies, and really hot goth chicks. Goth chick’s aside, it sucked. The people in these classes were, for the most part in them because they had behavioral problems. I wasn't like them, I just honestly couldn’t wrap my brain around mathematical concepts.

Instead of a classroom where I could receive special help, I was placed in a room full of misfits who tortured our teachers. Rather than help kids like me, they were constantly putting out psychotic episodes.

Like the kid who famously mumbled “I’m gonna kill you faggot” under his breath and stared at you with those piercing, serial killer eyes of his. If the Jason of today was in that classroom right now—well I’d probably break his fucking nose—instead I would just stare at my spiral notebook and try to understand why I wasn’t getting algebra.

In college, I continued my remedial track all the way up to graduation day at USML, where I got my Bachelor’s Degree. Since I’ve graduated, they’ve increased the standards for math so high that like my parents, I don’t think I could graduate High School (let alone college) if I was a student today. I don’t think I could get through all the math requirements.

My kid sister is like me, but unlike me—she’s getting help. My parents take her to a tutor and they give her homework outside the homework assigned to her at school. She hates it, like I’m sure I would have too, but I’m glad my folks are making her do it. Math is important, besides being confusing, and you need it to survive in today’s world.

That said, I’ve never need Geometry or Calculus (I don’t even know what that is), but I use basic addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication everyday at work. My mental math has actually improved a bit, and I’m shocked to find myself remembering basic algebra concepts on occasion.

Of course, I sometimes still use the “magic dots.” And I can’t help but shudder every time I pass a broom closet.