The Reason I'll Soon Be Drunk On Non-Alcoholic Eggnog

When all else fails, its time to hit the 'nog. There is nothing like drowning one's creeping doubt of not having a brain in a milky holiday drink. It is especially helpful if said eggnog is in my favorite mug, the one from Japan that has a picture of a dancing frog saying: "I am excited. Very much." and "The King of the frog" on the other side. Oh, I love Engrish. Oh, I loath Math.

 I've been trying to understand a simple graphing Algebra 2 graphing problem with the aid of my mathimatically compatible mother and my college-boy brother for the last half-hour, all of us studiously ignoring the occasional airborne sister or Dad getting pinned beneath the tilting christmas tree. It went something like this:

Me: "I still don't understand. Whats y = mx + b again?"
Mom: "Its the visual representation of an equation."
Me:"...so what is that?"
Mom:"Ask Jonmark."
Me: "(Repeats original question)."
Jonmark: "Duh. Its the visual representation of an equation."
Me: (sigh) "Yes, but whats an equation?"
Jonmark: "A statement asserting the equality of two expressions."
Me:"Lets go back. Whats a line?"
Jonmark: "A straight line, you know, the shortest distance between any two points on a plane."
Me: "And where is this plane?"
Jonmark: "In the mathimatical universe."
Me: "Right. Where is this mathimatical universe?"
Jonmark: "All around us!"
Me: "...so whats a graph?"

Mum explained how my mind just doesn't grasp the concept of Mathimatics to Jonmark. They both nodded knowingly and then gazed at my quiet confusion, pitiously. I think Mom is still holding out on that hope that my brains incompatibility with Math is made up for by some hidden vein of genius, because goodness knows I'm not going to be winning any Nobel Prizes for inventing a new principle in the configuration of third-dimension variables, or some other such gobbledy-gook.

See, eggnog makes sense.  Band-aids make sense. Laughter makes sense. Decimals don't make sense. Graphs don't make sense. Variables don't make sense. You can't drink a decimal, or  protect a wound with a graph, or delight a child with a variable. To some, like my math teacher, mathimatics is a barely tangable universe with no physical location, a world yet to be discovered. To me? I'm the girl in the silver mini-van trying to find my way to a place I know hardly anything about. I can barely find my way out of a paper bag with mapquest, let alone a navigating the mind-bending sea of Math.

So what is my brain made for? What is the key to unlocking the keyhole of my purpose? Math isn't the key, obviously. Thats like trying to jam a lumpy carrot up my nose. A paintbrush might be the key, or a pencil, or a dancing slipper. I'm not sure. I'm just waiting for the moment when God finally reveals to me what my brain IS meant for and I can finally unlock that genius. Or at least some buried treasure.

In the mean time I'm going to go top up my "King of the frog" mug. Wait, did we leave Dad under the tree?

Tinsel and Tryptophan,
Hannah

)

(P.S. Christmas is coming....