Math and I Are Not Friends

Math and I are not friends.

I'm not a math gal. Never have been a math gal, and never will be a math gal. I know it has NOTHING to do with me being a girl, it's just my personal relationship with math. Oh, I can do arithmetic, decimals, fractions, percentages, but get me to abstract math concepts and I'm lost. As a result, I don't like math.

I liked geometry, though. Which makes NO sense whatsoever, but it's true.

I can understand spatial relationships at a glance. I was an adult before I realized not everyone can. I remember one time I was going to rearrange my living room. My husband told me the furniture wouldn't fit the way I wanted it; if it did fit, it wouldn't be comfortable. I could see exactly how it would look before I did it. It was fine in the end. When we were moving back from Chicago, our friends came to help load the truck. Our one friend told me that all of our stuff wouldn't fit in the truck, but I knew it would. When we were finished, he was amazed, but then said, I should have known; you probably figured out the amount of stuff down to the cubic inch. I hadn't, I just knew.

For me, it's the same with flowers, or most any creative project. If you hand me a bunch of flowers, I can see the arrangement, wreath, bouquet, or whatever it is I'm supposed to make with them.

I think for me, it has to do with starting with something real, and ending with something real. No imaginary numbers, no negative zeroes. Flowers? Start with a bunch of loose stems, and finish with something beautiful. Furniture? Start with one layout, end with another. Gardening? Seeds to plants to garden.

This MS thing, though...mine started with vague symptoms. Sometimes the symptoms were more pronounced, but still pretty generalized. No one has pinpointed the cause, and there certainly isn't a cure...it's like an imaginary number in an equation you can't solve. Which, for me, was pretty much all of them. For someone who doesn't appreciate abstract concepts, not knowing the answers is almost as exasperating as having part of the answer. Except with MS, you don't get partial credit for showing your work.