I am not good with numbers. I would even go so far as to say I am terrified by them. When asked to do anything with numbers I break into a cold sweat. I probably have that dyslexia of numbers, whatever it is called, but I’ve never been officially diagnosed.
When I was about eight years my mother was trying to teach me some mathematical logic and requesting me to count to twelve. For some unknown reason I kept missing the number ten. It did not matter how many times she asked me to count aloud to twelve, I felt outside my own body hearing myself say “…eight, nine, eleven, twelve.” I remember the incident vividly perhaps because it was so odd, a moment of being out of my own control, and perhaps because my mother, my sister and I were so perplexed by this mental block of mine, that we ended up disintegrating into a peal of laughter.
So it is with some trepidation that I sit down, cross-legged on Iris’s (7 years) bedroom floor to begin a lesson in money. We’ve raided various purses, wallets and tooth-fairy collections for this class. The loot has been classified on the floorboards. Now, with green chalk in hand and the small blackboard on the back of the door, I begin. And I find myself saying,
“You see, Iris, it is all about 10. 0s and 1s and decimal points.”
I feel shaky. But I forge ahead and write £0.01, £0.10, £1.00, £10.00, £100.00 and £1000.000.
Me: How many one pence are there in a ten pence piece?
Iris: Ten.
Me: How many ten pence pieces are there in one pound?
Iris: Ten.
Me: How many pounds are there in a ten pound note?
Iris: Ten.
And on we go. We move the decimal point, we change to orange chalk, and then blue. A little dusting of rainbow is now on the floor underneath the back of the door. It all makes sense. What a perfect 10 world.
Three-year old Wren bursts in, searching for the company that is usually all his but, since coronavirus, has been divided into three for no reason he can possibly understand, and kicks the coins across the floor in a lovely tinkling sound of destruction. (By the way 10 does not easily divide into 3 parts, not whole people-sized parts anyway.)
Iris: WWWRRRREEENNNNNNNAAAHHHHH!
Wren: Mama!
A moment of non-ten, a moment of collection of loot, and nerves. We’ve got a lot of coins to clear up.
Iris: How many one hundreds in a trilliony whatsit?
Me: I don’t know what a trilliony whatsit is.
Iris: Okay, how many in a thousand?
Me: Ten.
Iris: When will the school be open again?
Me: I don’t know.
Iris: Will it be open after the Easter holidays?
Me: I don’t know.
Iris: Will it be open after the summer holidays?
Me: I don’t know.
Iris: Is there anyone who knows?
Me: No. There are some people who think they know and then others who think they know something different and then they argue about what they each think they know. But nobody really knows.
Iris looks at me. She is wearing her new glasses. She got them the week after I decided to take them out of school. She wanted, above all, to show her glasses to her class. No one else in her class wears glasses. She is somewhat disappointed in the loneliness of her glasses-wearing. Right now the spring light from the window is shining into them so half of her eyes disappear in a reflection of my own face and the back of Wren’s head. He has positioned himself squarely in my view of Iris’s lovely, extra intelligent be-specticled face, standing on my folded legs. He is covering me in overly loving smooches. He is singing a little song for only me to hear.
“Mama and me away, away to play…. Mama and me, Wren. ‘Cause the house is with all the people and Mama and me away…”
Later someone sends me a coronavirus joke on Whatsapp. It is from ‘the management’. The management apologises for the utter crapness of 2020. They are informing us that the decision has been made not to carry on with 2020 but from Monday to skip to 2021 which they plan to make a much better year.
So, there you have it! One can skip 10 (or in this case, 20) and move straight on to 11 (in this case 21) and this may actually be advisable.
If I’m honest it still sounds right to me: “Eight, nine, eleven, twelve.”
(If that also sounds right to you please be in touch and we can form a club or at least a WhatsApp group, given social distancing regulations. NB. No virus postings allowed, only new ways in mathematical thinking.)
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