Math Killed Me

Ah the beautiful art of procrastination. I cleaned the house, went on a bike ride, bought a few things from the store including a much needed couch, schemed up a menu for the week so I wouldn't have to keep on eating sandwiches, watched Lie To Me, checked email.

And now I'm writing.

I feel like a Jr. Higher all over again. I'm trying to get everything sorted out so I can apply for the EMT program at Portland Community College but of course the only thing that's standing in my way is the fact that I took absolutely NO math classes in college. Brilliant isn't it? I managed to ballet my way through four years of college artfully avoiding the dreaded subject by filling my class load with figure skating and rafting and astronomy and fencing and a few other very important subjects. But now it's come back to haunt me.

It's not that I don't like math; it's much more serious than that. I'm allergic to it, deathly allergic. My airway starts to constrict as soon as a math formula makes its presence known. My brain screams "IMMINENT DANGER! RUN! NO, FIGHT! NO, RUN! AHHHHH!" My fight or flight system goes haywire, my heart beats faster, my pupils dilate, blood pumps to my muscles, my hands get clammy, vision narrows, time slows down. The numbers pop out from their little two dimensional page and slowly hop towards me, laughing evilly, brandishing their weapons of death. They grow eyes and shark-like teeth and warts and oozing sores appear across their little bodies.

I watch all this in stunned horror, frozen to my chair. I manage to squeak out a few words calling to my roommate to come and save me from these evil numbers but she doesn't see them. No one sees them. As the zombie numbers come closer and I close my eyes and wait for the death... and wait and wait. When I finally crack my eyes open the numbers are back on the page weapon-less, sore-less, toothless and there's no evil laughing to be heard.

Math makes me hallucinate horror movies, I've discovered. I mean, that's what everyone tells me. I personally think it's real and not a hallucination at all but I can't tell people that. It's part of the grand scheme of the numbers to have people doubt my sanity so that one day when I lie dead on the floor, math book open and all the "innocent" numbers in their usual place, the police will disregard the note I left in my own blood spelling out my murderer.