It's certainly not me so it must be you

As you may have guessed by looking at my blog roll in addition to blogging obsessively, I also read a lot of blogs. I enjoy each and every one of you fine people on my roll and I love it that not all of you write about the same things that I do. I love reading the great posts from such a wide and diverse group of people.

One of the phenomena of my blog roll is that I have blogs written by spouses, cases in point Suzy, the Wisconsin Quaker Vixen, and her husband, the rock and roller, Ed, and Kim, aka A Sunny Thought and her husband Johnny Yen, and last but not least D Cup and her hubby Mathman. I love reading all those blogs because it never ceases to amaze me how people who are married can be so different and yet so alike.

In addition to Mathman I also read Freida Bee's and Matty Boy's blogs. The lovely Ms. Bee is a math teacher to be and Matty and Mathman are already math teachers. All three of them have such an enthusiasm for math that is infectious and which I find strange because I am not a "math person." I always had a hard time understanding advanced math concepts and since I went to academically suspect schools in Detroit and in Virginia I never really got the math help I needed. In fact some of my worst experiences in education occurred in math class. More specifically in this woman's math class:

This is Minerva Watson and she taught algebra, algebra 2, and calculus at Jonesville High School in Jonesville, VA. I had planned all along to go to college after high school because that's what was expected of me and because I believed that if I did not then I would be working at a car wash for the rest of my life. Yes, the theme to Car Wash was catchy, but it did not look like a career option that held much promise for me. So I took what were called "college prep classes" in high school, which were as I remember from those long gone days, a couple years of French, biology and chemistry, some assorted English classes, and advanced math classes, which included algebra 1 and 2 and geometry.

I did pretty well in geometry because I could visualize the shapes and and theories in my young mind. And the teacher, Mrs. Harris, was a decent teacher. She was genuinely concerned about her students and she wanted us to learn. She also had a tendency to stray off into other areas like current events and town gossip during class so her class was always fun because you never knew what she was going to do next.

The other courses however were a nightmare for me. Where Mrs. Harris was warm and engaging, Mrs. Watson was cold and off putting. She was a scary woman who seemed to hate all of us and I in turn hated her right back. I used to imagine the look of horror that her husband must have had on his face when she got "in the mood." The thought of her making the beast with two backs with any human being still grosses me out.

Ol' Minerva's style of teaching consisted of standing at the black board and spewing out that day's lesson in a boring monotone voice. She would hardly ever deign to answer our questions and she would get steamed if anyone, usually me, persisted in asking questions. Her already tight face would tighten into a grimace of death and her beady eyes would lock on whoever had displeased her and she would grimly stare the question asking offender down until they shut their mouth. I was not down with that style of teaching. I learned virtually nothing in algebra 1 and yet I stupidly listened to my idiot of a guidance counselor the next year and I signed up for algebra 2.

If the first year of algebra was hell then the second was hell squared, cubed even. The text book was thicker, the lessons harder, and so of course Minerva just picked up the pace and she went through the lessons faster. By half way through the year I was hopelessly lost. I had no idea what the hell was going on and my grades reflected it. But since I was just a smart ass high school student and not a math "teacher" with years of experience behind her, it was obviously my fault that I did not understand all that a+b=xyz crap. Oh no, the fact that she could not teach her way out of a paper bag was never brought up when I was forced out of her class one day and told to report to the guidance counselor's office.


When I got to his office I was told that the school was concerned about my lack of progress in her class and that I probably had some kind of learning disability, which meant in those days you were an idiot and they were basically going to measure you for your car wash jumpsuit right then and there. Mr. Scott, the guidance counselor, told me I was going to spend the afternoon in his office taking basic intelligence, vocabulary, and math tests. The implication was that I was an idiot and these tests were going to prove it and then they'd just toss me into the class with the slow kids and they'd be done with me. I remember having a burning hatred for that bitch Mrs. Watson and for the idiot of a guidance counselor who both thought that I was a fucking idiot because my algebra 2 grade was so bad.

I sat there taking those tests knowing that I was going to score off the charts compared to the scores they usually saw on those things. As he tallied up my scores Mr. Scott grew wide eyed. When he told me that I scored higher than he'd ever seen a problem student score, I wanted to remind him I made good grades in all my other classes but I kept my mouth shut because if I did not then I was going to cuss him out. He asked me what the problem was with me and algebra 2 and I flat out told him that Mrs. Watson was not a good teacher and that she rarely allowed anyone to ask questions and when she did allow questions, she never explained her answers so that I could understand them.

I must have hit a nerve with my criticism or they maybe just wanted me to shut up because for the rest of the year she allowed me to pretty much sit in the back of her class and sleep and or read books, I remember reading The World According to Garp and Good as Gold in her class while she droned on. I would just sign my name on tests and she'd give me a "C." I think I must have danced a jig when I finally got out of her class at the end of the year.

Unfortunately for me, her passing me just to be rid of me did me no favors in college where I looked like an idiot in freshman, or as it was called then, "Bonehead" math. I made a "D" in that class but thankfully it was the only one I needed to get my history degree.


As I've aged, hopefully like a fine wine, I've come to appreciate math more and more. And while I may never understand why the hell a+b=c, I can appreciate the role math plays in my life and in the history of the world. And you know what, I don't feel a bit bad about bad mouthing an old teacher because she was truly awful and she's probably dead by now anyway. But if by some chance that you're not dead Mrs. Watson and you stumble across this post one day, you sucked as a teacher and I should have raised more of a fuss about how awful you were.


I wished I had had a dedicated enthusiastic teacher like Mathman or Matty Boy or Freida Bee, who knows, if I had had one of them as a teacher then I might have won that Nobel Prize by now.