I hate math. Always have.
Everything about it.
It reminds me of the bills that need paid, the brain power I do not have, and I really hold it against those who understand and love it.
In fact, way back in high school, after three years of putting up with the math club geeks, a fellow student came along promising a revolution. “We will blow the math club up and make math great again!” was the slogan we adopted.
I was inspired. Math had made me so angry and that anger fueled my desire to be involved. Even though I had no real interest in math, was terrible at it, and certainly didn’t care about its future, I was determined to support my fellow student who was, frankly, amusing in the way he picked on the current leaders of the math club and brought fear to their eyes.
We followed the candidate everywhere and it was a clear the silent majority had really hated math. We were united in our hatred of it. When the math club members tried to point out our candidate had no experience in the subject, we just shouted them down. Who cares after all? We were going to teach the math club a lesson once and for all.
This was beautiful democracy. Students who loved math were outnumbered, we swallowed them up. There was no rational argument that could be made to stop us from busting up the math club.
On election day it was a blowout. Those of us who had never paid much attention to math voted together and ousted all those geeks. We were now firmly in control of the math club. It was quite a victory.
But we learned an important lesson. Despite our win, we still didn’t have any interest in math.
Winning didn’t mean we actually wanted to go to meetings, study the subject or put in the hard work of understanding anything going on. Our involvement in math hadn’t increased in any way.
We had rejected the students who actually knew what they were doing. We certainly underappreciated their skills. Soon it became apparent (though we never really admitted it) that we were in way over our head.
Within months the math geeks got their act together and began impeachment proceedings against their new president. At that point those of us who had supported him didn’t care. It was just more math business after all.
I tell that story because I have often wondered what happened to that student who led us in revolution against the math club. And I often wonder what would have happened had he switched his anger from math to politics and decided to run for president of the United States.