Malamang Mabatukan ako ng mga naging Math Teachers ko

I just lost what I haven’t been using. And taking a test that will measure my skills is the most inopportune time to find out about it.

At malamang sa oo, mabatukan ako ng mga naging Math teachers ko for being sooo slow at handling simple arithmetic. I had around 20 equations to solve in 10 minutes. The moment I saw the numbers, I swear, naramdaman kong bumaluktot, if not nag-shrink, ang mathematical side of my brain. Hindi ko pa yata nakalahati yung dapat sagutan. Nakakahiya talaga ako!

If the seventh grader me were to answer that exam, I would have breezed through it with extra time to brush my hair. Pero na-spoil ako ng calculators na very conveniently kong na-aaccess. Deprived na sa exercise ang math part ng brain ko. Hindi na siya as alive, alert, awake, enthusiastic (!) as before.

I wasn’t bad in Math, you see. At least not generally. In my last year in high school, I could solve complicated equations—those things called polynomials which seemed to have bordered on calculus—in 5 seconds while in front of the whole class. Ms. Maranan, my 4th year high school Algebra teacher, had a thing for board works and she’d literally count to five and expect you to arrive with the correct answer at the stroke of her “-ve” (for “five”). And there would only be two of you in front so it wasn’t difficult for her to see your every move.

If Mrs. Canzana, my grade 6 math teacher, knew I am screwing up my multiplication table again, she’d be throwing her volleyball at me along with her simple yet nerve-wracking “6x7?’s.”

If Sir Melo and Ms. Zuela, my Geometry and my Trigonometry teachers, respectively, knew I’d end up like this, they wouldn’t have placed me in Math A class come senior year.

If Sir Marwin, my Math 11 instructor, sees my score for the arithmetic part of the test I took today, he’d surely take back my 1.0.

If my dad discovers my day’s mishap, he would certainly ban me from going out and playing until I’ve mastered my multiplication table. Again.