A Few Words about Math

I say this with pride: I am not a Math Person. 

I am a Word Person.

When it comes to words, I speak the language. Words will mind me; they will do what I tell them to do. I can make those little suckers line up and march neatly across the page or even make them waltz.

Words are flexible. They will cry for you or laugh with you; they can calm or comfort or provoke. Words can seduce you.

Math is unmoved. Math is rigid. Math is a Chinese wall. Math is not my native tongue.

Words will fling themselves at your feet, wrap themselves around your ankles and beg you to  stay.

Math is unblinking in the face of your loss and will remind you to close the door on your way out. Your tears have no power here. To math, your sighs are nothing more than wind, and Math will calculate the speed.

Words will keep you company, curl up cozy in your pocket or steal into your heart. Words will share the journey, remark at the scenery and invite wild companions to join the adventure with you.

Math will calculate the fare and frown at the ticket taker.

Words offer you the headiest of wines, ply you with sweets, and woo you— not only with flowers, but with their fragrance as well.

Math calculates the cost, eats only the vegetables at a banquet and turns in early. Math must have everything its own way.

Words will find a compromise, build a consensus.

Math will insist.

Oh sure, Math has a language of its own. Math will try to lull you with words like “variable” and “co-efficient” and “prime”… but don’t be fooled. Those words do not mean what you think they mean. In Math even “mean” doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Math is a cult, and will insist you drink the Kool-Aid.

But, as a Word Person, I am a dissenter, a dissident, a disbeliever.

Once upon a time, the members of the Math Cult used to dress alike, outfitted with pocket protectors, slide rulers at the ready. You could spot them in a crowd and easily avoid them. But having learned the power of assimilation, today they hide in plain sight, armed with tiny calculators.

Oh, you say, but Math invented the internet, and you love the internet, what about the internet?

Math may have invented the internet and even convinced us that the internet is shiny, and innocuous---despite its binary nature---but it was done so they can use laptops in public to perpetuate the evils of Math. They do not rejoice in the beauty of Pinterest, as we do. They lull us with YouTube so they can------Oh look! Cat videos!

......What was I saying?

Oh, right, Math. Evil Math, hiding in plain sight, appearing to be one of us. Do not be fooled. Do not believe in “theorems” and “imaginary numbers”. Do not believe that anything is a “given”. That’s the first step along a very slippery slope that ends in the cult of Mathematics, face first in the punch bowl.

Be strong, Word People, beware.

Be not squared.