Growing up was difficult - characterised with plethora of challenges. My case was not the usual lack of care, it was lack of intelligence to comprehend the teachings of the mathematics teacher.
I remember clearly when he taught us; that "7 minus 10" was answerable with "it cannot", of course, this made a lot of sense to me. Few years later, the same man came to say "7 minus 10" is now equal "minus 3". It took a lot of patience, spanning across days to appreciate the possibility of subtracting a higher number from a lesser one.
By the time I properly understood how to arrive at a negative answer which in fact was a major feat for me, the teacher was already introducing another mystery. This time, he started teaching us how to subtract numbers from alphabets. Strange!
So, one day, he gave us a classwork which bothered on subtracting "10" from "y". Attempting this question got me genuinely confused. Meanwhile, other pupils were not just answering this question, their answers were also said to be correct. I observed they had rough sheets on which they did the solving before arriving at the answer, in order not to be left out, I did what I thought was the smart thing, I got my own rough sheet and clearly wrote out alphabets A to Z, then I numbered them respectively. I simply replaced the alphabet in the question with the corresponding number, so I changed "y minus 10" to "25 minus 10", I felt like a genius after propounding this formula, this feelings however did not last long, it ended when they teacher walked to my desk and took a look at my work, instead of commending me, he mounted a knock on my head - that kind of knock that brings out your tears before you even start the main cry.
Well, I kept striving to comprehend the teachings of the mathematics teacher but in vain. He later made things worse for poor me when he moved to a higher cloud of voodoo as he introduced things like square root, sohcahtoa, bodmas and pytagoras something. There was this other book they consulted like Ifa oracle, I think it was called four-figure-table. Everything was like a fata morgana for me as I got further confused by each lesson.
Having realised I was not smart enough to catch up with my peers for the purpose of mathematics class, I one day took a drastic decision which ultimately saved me from the mystics of the mathematics teacher. I swallowed my pride and approached another pupil, I asked him to teach me mathematics from the point alphabets came into the lesson, it was a funny request but it worked; and it kept working. I realised I was not necessarily as dull as I thought, I merely was apprehensive of the mathematics teacher. From then on, whenever he was done with his mysteries, I would simply approach that pupil for explanation, that was how I demystified the mathematics teacher. So, today, I can do a bit of mathematics, at least I can do any calculation involving money 馃榾馃榾馃榾
