“Dad, I need some help,” my 13-year-old son said. “It’s math.”
“Math?” I asked.
“Yea, math.”
“Hold on, let me go get my superhero mask.” I am the master at middle-school math. So few of us are called upon to accomplish the impossible, but when we hear that heroes horn, we must answer. As my son set down, I took a moment to limber up and completed a set of lunges at an obtuse angle.
It’s a math exercise; you wouldn’t understand.
“Ok, here’s the problem, and I keep getting the wrong answer,” he said as he pushed his computer over to me. There was the equation. A decimal point number multiplied by a fraction. 1/9th, the evilest of all fractions. From the computer screen, I could see the fraction laugh at me. I did more lunges.
“Son, go get me a beer, my thinking pants, and a bluebook,” I told him.
“What’s a bluebook?” he asked.
“Just get me some paper.”
I’ll admit, online schooling has been difficult this year. With three kids spaced out across three different types of schools, I find myself pulled in a lot of directions at once. And most days right now, I don’t feel super at all. Mostly, I feel stupid.
I am in charge of helping my 14-year-old daughter learning French. Can I speak French? No? But can I teach it! Also, no. However, with math, well, I’ve got math.
Using astro-calculus that is only known by the late Stephan Hawking and myself, I dive into my boy’s fraction problem. It fights and the answer is elusive, obviously held in a dungeon by the fraction. My thinking pants help. And suddenly, I have it. Victory is mine.
“The answer is .792,” I said. I thrust my sheets of paper at my boy and the answer shined in the middle as if written by angels, or angles as the case may be in math homework. “Type it into that little answer box.”
My boy does. A red X appears over the answer like this is Family Feud.
“What?”
“It’s wrong, dad.”
“Like hell it is! Give me more paper.”
Again, I do math battle. Again, I get .792. I let loose with a couple of super cusswords.
“Son, go put on my angry music.” Things have turned serious. Around we go for the umpteenth time and I don’t get anything other than .792. 1/9th is winning and is making me look foolish; like an amateur.
“Should we get mom?” my son asks. I hate to tell him that his mother ran at the mere mention of math, so I tell him that she went out to get a gallon of milk.
“Will she be back?”
“Not if 1/9th has anything to say about.”
With the music cranking, I reinvent algebra. I bring in a protractor and an astrolabe. I divine the very essence of 1/9th. A new dimension is created. And yet, .792 is the only answer I get.
Sweat dripped off me. My breath came in short gasps. My thinking pants left with the angry music. I am left speechless and broken. I read the instructions for what seems the thousandth time. All it says is solve and then the numbers. No other hint is encoded in them. I type in .792 into the little answer box again. “Incorrect” scrawls across my screen and the X reappears. All is lost.
“It’s ok, dad. Maybe we just don’t know how to do this one.” My heart breaks as my son speaks these words. How can 7th grade math defeat me? As fathers go, I’m not much to look at. A failure that cannot be redeemed.
“Maybe we are supposed to round up?” my son says.
“Wait, what?” Is there hope I see in his eyes.
“Round up.”
“Have you rounded up in any of the other problems you’ve done today?” I asked him.
“No.”
I look at all the other answers on the same page. All are in decimal places to the hundredth. None are rounded. But with no better answer and the fate of the math universe at stake, we take our Hail Mary.
I type in .8.
“Correct.” Stated the computer. Then a green checkmark appeared, and the screen went to the next problem.
The expletives that left my mouth were not very heroic. Superman would have not said the words that I said. In fact, I think I invented several new ones that have never been uttered before. At that moment, a sailor of ill repute felt a shudder go down his spine as he stumbled down a dirty back alley.
“Son,” I said to my boy after my words had turned the sky dark.
“Yeah, dad,” he said, a smile played across his face, obviously impressed by my math wizardry and my extensive vocabulary.
“If you worked at NASA, our answer would have been right. If the fate of the world depended on you and I doing fractions, and astronauts needed saving, they would call us. .792 is a more accurate answer that .8.”
“Whatever, I’m going to play games.”
And then he left me, with my perfect answer .792 still sitting in my mind’s eye. 1/9th, you have been vanquished and you would do well to not forget your defeat.
And also, I hate online school.
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