'[A mathematician is a] scientist who can figure
out anything except such simple things as squaring
the circle and trisecting an angle. '
~Evan Esar, Esar's Comic Dictionary
.......................................................
Miss McKellar
.......................................................
Mathematics surely frightens me,
Miss McKellar.
When long division's mentioned,
I turn yeller.
My nerves begin to twitch,
My ears all start to itch,
And the numbers all attack at once,
Miss McKellar.
When I think of Primes
My skin begins to crawl.
And when they mention decimals
I roll into a ball.
Subtraction rattles every sense,
Addition makes my ear lobes tense.
I think they'll be the death of me,
Miss McKellar.
Mathematics makes my hair turn green,
Miss McKellar,
Just mention that trinomial scalene,
Miss McKellar,
You'll see my eyeballs bug all out,
Like a mutant brussels sprout,
I'll be so bogged with hives and gout,
You will not recognize me,
Miss McKellar.
Why do they make mathematics
Such a part of life?
The big F on my homework
Cuts just like a knife.
I've forgotten how to find the dent
In minus twenty-three percent,
Subtract by four,
And move the decimal point
Do-hickey here...
I've thought and thought and wracked my head,
Miss McKellar.
And I've noted all the things you've said,
Miss McKellar.
But are they isosceles or ice-cicles,
Vertex sums or variables?
Or parallelogram coefficient equllaterals,
Miss McKellar?
You make it sound so easy,
Miss McKellar.
You explain solutions clearly,
Miss McKellar.
But these numbers bring me awful strife,
And I can't add to save my life.
Maybe I'm a Math-O-Phobe
Miss McKellar.
Copyright © 2010 Richard D. Remler
Oh, my! But this is too good! And now you must confess that you excelled at arithmetic. La, but you sound too intelligent as you blythely rhyme it all out so readily, throwing in the frightening words laden with such torment! Wonderful! I love it!
Loved this math phobia Miss McKellar write Richard...
Miss McKellar sounds like a nice teacher! Math is one of the funnest things I believe but in some stances its way to hard! I love your math-o-phobe its amazing!