But Who’s Counting?

As I was going to St. Ives,

I met a man with seven wives,

Each wife had seven sacks,

Each sack had seven cats,

Each cat had seven kits:

Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,

How many were going to St. Ives?

This blog is personal.  I have always had problems with numbers, along with a history of failure—as in:  I cannot fail to mention that, despite my brilliance, my SAT math score was well below average.  Can I still remember it?  Does humiliation ever leave us or are we left constantly unmoored?

Let’s start with the multiplication time’s table.  After 5, what’s the point? But there we were, droning away in our seats, as if repeating the tables would help us figure it out when it was needed.  Okay, I remember that 12x12=144.  And the tens table was doable.  But 9? Unfathomable.

I grew up in New York State, where there’s such a thing as the Regents, which you have to pass to get your high school certificate.  Math was an essential part of the curriculum.  So I had to take algebra, geometry, intermediate algebra and trigonometry.  Three years of hell with the Regents every June.  Talk about trauma!  I didn’t even attempt calculus, and the first day of physics was enough for me to realize that I should drop out.  The teacher started with something about pendulums.  The only thing I knew about pendulums was from “My Grandfather’s Clock.”

Along came college, where there were still distribution requirements.  Thank god for today’s students they no longer exist.  I had to take a year of either math or philosophy.  I chose the latter.  Why then were there all these A/B/C equations, taught by someone with yellowed fingers, stained from continuous tobacco use in class?

Being rather rootless with no particular aim in college, I found time to read an unassigned book and suddenly decided I wanted to be a doctor.  This entailed taking inorganic chemistry.  Did everyone except me know that inorganic chemistry was basically math, where everything had to balance?  Leave aside the lab where my partner wouldn’t let me touch a thing because he did want to get into med school.  What were all those problem sets?  Why did I have to use a slide rule to solve them?  Yes, I’m that old. No calculators in the golden days of yore.  Slide rules that had to be mastered.  But I came through with a solid C.  And decided that the world didn’t need my caring hands to add to its problems.

Graduating as an English major—is anyone surprised?—I muddled through a few years until I met my husband at Princeton.  He was an electrical engineer and so knew something about numbers.  We married.  I blithely told him I would handle the checkbook.  Somehow he expected the checkbook to balance.

Years passed with my husband in total control of our finances and anything measurable.  During those years I was warned many times by female friends that some day I might have to take over all of this money business.  I pooh-poohed them—and then my husband fell on his head and had a brain bleed.

I’m nothing if not a fast learner.  Give it a year or two.  And now I’m in total control of our finances, checking sites to make sure every penny is accounted for.  But math still rears its ugly head.  Because I started to play canasta.

Did you know there’s math involved in canasta?  You can go down with 125, 155, or 180.  I sort of intuit when I reach 125.  155?  Give me a break!  At least 180 is round.  The people I play with are patient, if not sympathetic.  They even help me count when I ask what 60 and 50 make.  Those jokers sometimes make life difficult.  By this I mean the cards, not those with whom I play.

And now, to top this blog off, I’m going to try to figure out the riddle.  I will insert my answer and it will probably be wrong.

And yet—with the skills of an English major, I reread the riddle and begin to discern only one person was going to St. Ives.  The rest were headed in the other directions.  I breathe a deep sign of relief!!!!!

But hold on.  What if they were both going in the same direction toward St. Ives?  The single speaker of the riddle caught up with the man and his seven wives and they had a jolly time walking together.  Wait a second while I give the mind a most needed rest.

I got to above two thousand and quit. Do I get partial credit?