After Math BFG’s

When I was living in Long Island, New York, I have a core memory of a particular day at school. One of my co-students got sick with this mysterious disease that freaked everyone’s parents. All the parents decided that they wouldn’t let their kids go to school the next day, because reasons I guess. I’m almost positive that it wasn’t contagious, and the kid didn’t go to school, but somehow people freaked the freak out. Of course, my mom didn’t care for my well being, so she sent me and my siblings to school. I guess my mom didn’t really care if I lived or died. I was the only one in the entire 2nd grade to go to school.

So of course, the news had to cover it. I got on the news, and they filmed me putting together a puzzle of the United States, so I was already famous at the age of 8 (foreshadowing how famous I’ve become being a bitter blogger). That summer we ended up moving to South Dakota, and now I’m 100% sure that it was because I got whatever that kid got. To this day, I still don’t know how to do math, and I’m sure that was why. My parents tell me that it was because my dad got a promotion, but by moving me there, I got a demotion. It definitely explains why I’m bitter and why I don’t talk to my dad anymore…except those times when I talk to him once a week or so.

When we moved to South Dakota, I was in 3rd grade, and we had to learn this new kind of math where we had to multiply things together. We did flash cards, multiplication tables, and we had to do timed tests where we had to get so many right in a minute so we could graduate to the 4’s. My teacher wasn’t very good at predicting the future, because she didn’t think that computers would exist that did all this math for us.

In subsequent years, they insisted that we continue to learn harder and harder math, like algebra, fractions, graphing, geometry, calculus, trigonometry and a bunch of other imaginary things. I found it a really great waste of my time to go to class every day and learn imaginary things that wouldn’t help us in the slightest in our future careers or lives.

To this day, I’ve not only never used trigonometry once in my life, I don’t even know what it means.

In the history of the world, there are only three people that have ever used trigonometry. Good Will Hunting Matt Damon, the woman from Hidden Figures that worked for NASA and that one high school trigonometry teacher.

Another of my core memories was the last day I ever had to do math in college. It was Math 110, and it required a TI-81 calculators, and we had to graph things. I remember taking the last test, getting a D, and jumping for joy (more of a silent fist pump) that I passed, and in that moment, I was almost 100% sure I would never have to do math again. As you know though, Bitter Ben isn’t very good at predicting the future either.

Pull out your VCR and push the fast forward button to the year 2000 when the Y2K bug would end the world so I wouldn’t need to do math. Unfortunately, the world kept existing, so I decided to move on with my life and I got married to this girl. I had graduated a couple of years ago, but she was had just one measly semester left. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that one of the last classes she had was…mathematics.

I didn’t mind doing her homework for her English class, which was just reading a bunch of short stories, but when she was freaking out about math, I was like…sure I’ll help you with math (through gritted teeth). Just like in the Godfather III, when Michael Corleone says, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” She asked me to help her with stuff I hadn’t done since I was in high school. I was flabbergasted, flummoxed, and bewildered. Somehow, through a mighty miracle she pushed through, she got a C- and I would never have to do math again.

I think you all know where I’m going now. My wife and I love each very much, and when two parents love each other…they go into the bedroom, mix up some ingredients, put those in an oven, and 9 months later an ugly, bloody, screaming alien comes out. Then they wipe it off and it looks more like a much more attractive human.

Kids are fun when you first have them. They are so cute and sweet and only cry 23 out of 24 hours in the day, and put you in sleep deprivation tanks. Just when you tire of them so much that you can’t hardly stand to see them anymore, they turn 5 or 6 and they go to school. Those early school years are great, because they come home and give you horrible artwork to put on the fridge. At least you save money on framing good paintings to put on your fridge.

Then they make friends that you can’t stand, but always want to have over the house. Fast forward on the VCR and 3rd grade comes, and a little bit of multiplication comes. Fast forward on the DVD player, and they are doing fractions and percentages, so not too bad. Fourth and fifth grade come, and you might need to sit with them for a little, but for the most part, they slide by with the basics. Then seventh grade comes and…Algebra, and they hate math, you hate, we all hate math, and you’re spending your nights and weekends having PTSD, and nightmares about how in the heck letters and numbers work together. All of sudden, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

The next four years, a nightmare cloud comes as soon as math gets a little hard for them. Then junior year comes, they finally get their last math class done, they don’t have any math left, and the nightmare cloud clears.

Just when that cloud clears, a new one approaches, as your young one that you hadn’t worried about, becomes a seventh grader without your permission. Another four nightmare years until he’s a junior. It’s almost April, and we are on the dark nightmare cloud of doom countdown clock. It may be the last time I ever have to look at an unrecognizable string of letters and numbers again. Unless I watch Good Will Hunting or Hidden Figures.

My wife and I made a solemn vow last night that we would never, ever, ever, help grandkids with math homework. That line has been drawn. I will fake a heart attack if I need to get out of ever helping anyone else with math. This is my AFTERMATH era.

Just like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy, after my son’s last math class this year, I DECLARE AFTERMATH!

I’m not very good at predicting the future, as you’ve seen in previous sentences. But I will fake my death, or pretend I’m comatose, before I ever help anyone with math again.

That is final, Michael Corleone…

Here is a string of letters and numbers (known as a Bitter Friday Gifture) that you can look at while you are avoiding doing math or helping a kid do math…

I was the only kid in class…