I hate math.

I’ve always had a contentious relationship with math and all its offshoots – trigonometry, geometry, algebra, calculus, etc.

I barely managed to scrape through the subject at school. I could never understand why I would need to learn it. I will never have any use for this was my reasoning – how will it ever help me deal with real life?

But this last weekend the heavens opened, a light shone down on me, and the angels sang in exalted chorus.

All is revealed: I will need it to help my daughter with her math homework.

This epiphany is of little comfort as I try to understand the handout from her teacher listing the math strategies she needs to master and practice everyday.

Now is as good a time as any to regret daydreaming about writing “My Great Novel,” instead of paying more attention in math class.

“So Mom, should I use the nine strategy for this one?” she asks.

“What do you think – should you use the nine strategy?” I query back. This I did learn -- if you don’t know the answer to something, just repeat the question.

“Can you explain this to me?” I ask my husband that night giving him the handout.

“It’s really quite easy,” he says, after giving it a quick once over. When someone says something is easy, it never, ever is. Half a minute later my eyes have glazed over.

I try to calculate how many ounces remain in the leftover wine bottle on the kitchen counter. But, darn it, that needs math, too. Besides, I don’t think there’s enough in there to make me believe for just a moment that I’m Einstein anyway.

I’m back to the present and my husband has grabbed a piece of paper. It’s covered with examples of the different strategies and how to work them out.

“So you see, you put this here and then its pretty easy. . . it all falls into place as long as you remember this basic principal,” he is pointing out.

Five minutes of my life that I will never get back.

I stare at the numbers and they’re sticking their tongue out and mocking me.

Oh, god. . . how I HATE math.

By Tania Malik

Labels: angels, homework, math, novels, Tania Malik, wine

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What on earth did I do with my time before my daughter was born? Did I suffer from narcolepsy or some sort of chronic fatigue disorder or something? Because I’m wondering how it is possible that I lived in my house two years prior to her birth and still did not manage to paint the dining room, organize my office, or finish putting my wedding photos into an album.

Because I had hours, I had days, I had whole weekends where changing diapers, cleaning up the high chair, washing boo boos, picking up toys and constantly spotting a very small and very reckless climber (she likes to stack things up and see how high she can get) were not mandatory activities.

Even if I take into account all those Saturday mornings when my husband and I slept in till the decadent hour of nine (or even ten!) a.m., or the Sundays wiled away sipping coffee on the back patio reading The New York Times, that still left a lot of space to get things accomplished. What was I thinking? I’ll bet I could have written a novel, found an agent and got it published.

We could be living off the royalties from the movie rights right now! (At least this is what I fantasize that I could have done with all that freedom I had pre-child.) Wouldn’t it be great if you could get credit for the time you didn’t use? Because let me tell you, I’d sure like to cash in some of those credits now…

By Shannon Matus-Takaoka

Labels: dining out with kids, movies, novels, Shannon Matus-Takaoka, sleeping, The New York Times

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