As it turns out, I am a MATH GENIUS

If you know me personally, please make sure you're seated in a sturdy chair and not holding a hot beverage before you read this.

I just did eight algebra problems with Meelyn and only got TWO of them SLIGHTLY wrong. Please keep in mind that I haven't been in an algebra class since 1980, and even when I was there, I wasn't really there. I was thinking about my boyfriend, John. Or studying my lines for the play with my script propped up inside my algebra book. You know. Important stuff.

So imagine how I am feeling right this minute to know that I -- just like that janitor played by Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting -- am a math genius of no common talent.

Here's what we just did:

Practice Set Find the following products:

a. (-3x)(-2xy)

b. 3x²(xy³)

c. (2a²b)(-3ab²)

d. (-5x²y)(-4x)

e. (-xy²)(xy)(2y)

f. (-3m)(-2mn)(m²n)

g. (4wy)(3wx)(-w²)(x²y)

h. 5d(-2df)(-3d²fg)


We got a little messed up on two problems because I had some cobwebs in my brain that needed to be cleared out before I could remember that a negative times a negative is always positive, while a negative times a positive is always negative. And of course, a positive times a positive is always positive.

Surprisingly enough, I feel very positive right now, with very little negative weighing me down. Meelyn was as cross as a flamingo with shin splints because she couldn't figure out the first two problems, so I nervously offered to help, thinking: Doomed. She is doomed.

I was shocked when we got the first two right (we got tripped up by those pesky negatives on problems c and g) and I am so stoked, I feel like going out to the front yard and saying, "I JUST DID EIGHT PROBLEMS IN MY DAUGHTER'S EIGHTH GRADE MATH BOOK AND I ONLY MISSED TWO OF THEM!"

Or...

Maybe not.


*ahem*

(I also learned the HTML coding to do those exponent numbers, so I feel like a supernova of Important Knowledge. I could probably grab Hershey and flawlessly execute the pas de deux from The Nutcracker right now, but he's sleeping and I hate to disturb his rest.)