I posted the following on Facebook, against my better judgment, and now post it here, also against my better judgment. I hope you will not think less of me for my confession. I just have to vent.
(My final draft shows a space between paragraphs. The post you’re reading doesn’t. I can’t fix it. I am sorry if you find it difficult to read. WordPress does this occasionally. I apologize for criticizing the host platform in public, but I just have to vent.)(
(WordPress also published this post without my telling it to. Maybe AI has taken over.)
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A neurologist recently asked if I’d noticed any cognitive decline. Well, I’m not going to admit to that.
I said, flippantly, that I’ve lost my algebra. (I wasn’t working problems when I found that out. It just came to me one day that I’ve lost it.) I then discovered he wrote that down. Never be flippant with doctors.
I haven’t used algebra since 1970 except to do comparative shopping in the grocery store, and I haven’t done that for about thirty years, since they started putting price per serving on the shelves. I think it reasonable that I lost my algebra. I found worksheets online and started practicing again but have decided it’s not worth it.
I also think it’s reasonable that I no longer carry my address book in my head, and that I rarely know what day it is since I don’t work and can ask my husband, who keeps up with those things.
I’m shall remind the doctor that I now write publishable, and published, fiction and can still spot a typo at 30 paces (in other people’s stuff).
And that I can recite the first 20 lines of
The Canterbury Tales in Middle English (learned in 1981) and “The Owl and the Pussycat” (learned in 1953 from hearing it so often).
And that I once explained two sections of the
Texas Probate Code in a song sung to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic. And the
Dewey Decimal decades, t00. I consider them nothing short of brilliant.
English majors have cognitive functions that are just as well developed as those of math majors.
(Years ago I told an internist I thought my brain was going. He said, “I’m not going to write that down. Insurance companies don’t like it.” He understood flippancy. I hope my insurance doesn’t care about my algebra. Maybe I shouldn’t confess here, but the neurologist needs to read it, though he probably won’t. I’ll give him the URL anyway.)
(I loved algebra and am sorry it’s gone.)
(I lost my trig by the end of the summer after I took the course. I loved it, too, but never really understood the practical applications except for something about measuring the height of a flagpole. I think. Or s0mthing. It was just a bunch of abstractions for me to play with.)
(I didn’t get the practical applications of algebra either. More abstractions, and such beautiful symmetry and balance.)
(When it comes to math, the more abstract, the better. I made A’s in arithmetic, but it wasn’t fun, figuring out the width of a piece of fabric you made by sewing together two other pieces, each 10 inches wide, with a seam requiring 2 inches on each side folded over. Except the book didn’t describe the allowance for the seam in such straightforward terms. It took four of us seventh-grade girls twenty minutes to figure that out, and one of us could sew. We kept forgetting the 4 inches. I don’t know how long it took the boys. You know it’s bad when you remember a problem from 1964.)
(On the other hand, Mrs. Bessie Fricke, my fourth-grade teacher, ensured that all of her students knew their multiplication tables, but good. I still know them.)
(l thought I was odd, setting up little equations in my head in the grocery store, until I learned the math teacher did it that way, too.)
(To read my rendition of the
Dewey decades, you’ll have to scroll down that page to “Dewey Marches On.” There’s some introductory stuff before it.)
And that’s what I know, and don’t know. It’s the truth. And it’s all I’m going to confess.
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Image 0f brain by Felix Martinez from Pixabay
Image of The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear via Wikicommons. Public domain.
Image of Canterbury Mural by Ezra Winter (1886–1949). Photographed 2007 by Carol Highsmith (1946–). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay
Image of Dewey poster via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
M. K. Waller 
I think those cognitive tests are scary, even if you pass perfectly. Just the fact that they want to give you one–that causes me concern. I mean that they want to give ME one.
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He doesn’t want to give me a test. He just asked if I’d noticed anything. I told him about the address book–shouldn’t have, since I’ve memorized the only number and address I use often. My old book is useless, since most of the contacts have died or no longer contacts. I figure I am what I am, and so what. As for you–you work out plots and publish and edit and handle things. I don’t think you need to worry about a test.
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LOLOLOLOL LUV!!!
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The day I can’t recite Jabberwocky from heart is the day I know I’m in trouble!
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