Math & The Mist of Untruth in My Life

Posted on December 22, 2008 in Childhood

I might have embraced music if some sadist hadn’t told me that there was math in it. Another told me the same was true of linguistics, so I lost my confidence that I should ever be good at languages. My fear of math drove me into a corner. I never got to enjoy the happier sides of mathematics due to the fear engendered in me by arithmetic and by cruel folks who liked to point out how my aspirations were all tied into my weakness. My family used to say, almost as one voice, that arithmetic was everything in the business world. The cruel irony of my working life was that I wrote and edited spreadsheets, a task that emiserated me.

I believe the voices of my youth all meant to encourage me to pay more attention to my arithmetic and my algebra. But they only managed to douse my fire, to spray it with a chaotic mist of untruth.