The long-term relationship continues…
Photo by Media Commons

By Shannon Craig

Copy editor

I walked into the bank last week with an objective: to get a loan. According to my calculations it was to be a simple task. I would approach the counter and say “Hello, I’ll have a loan please!” The teller would say something like “OK, great. One loan for you. Have a nice day.”

Things rarely work out the way that I anticipate.

Instead, I strolled in and was redirected to a large poster on the wall with numbers and equations that I didn’t understand. What is APR? Fixed rate or variable? An uneasy feeling washed over me and my palms began to sweat. I felt that I knew these things, I had learned them all before, many times in fact.

Though I had been trying for years to end my commitment to math, it was clear that math wasn’t ready to end its commitment to me.

Math and I became intimately acquainted in the third grade. We met through a mutual friend, Mrs. Leroy, and I got Math’s digits. When our relationship started, everything seemed so real and congruent. We were equals. I knew all about its origins and I was sure that things were going to be entirely positive. On comprehensive tests we baked cookies and split pizzas with people named Joe and Lisa. We found change on the ground and ate a lot of jellybeans. There was no discussion about point A to point B, we went with the flow.

Like every committed relationship, we eventually had our hard times. We hit our vertex and our downward slope began. Math would get on a tangent and carry on all night. If we were even a fraction off, Math would become so irrational. Let me tell you, Math has its eccentricities; it pals around with all kinds of multiples and I caught it double timing once. It refused to reciprocate. Things got pretty radical at times, imaginary even.

Things became especially rough when we got our x’s involved.

Ok, so we had some pi along the way, but I thought that things were going to be more linear than this. Statistically, our relationship is entirely unequal.

But the problem that I have now is one that cannot be solved in absolutes. Math and I have been together so long now that the power is exponentially out of my hands. I mean, if we really ended it all, how the hell would we split our properties?

Standing in the bank lobby and looking Math over, I felt like we didn’t even know each other anymore. We never could find a common denominator and the distance between us has grown substantially. We are in completely different areas of life, even on the surface.

For now, Math and I are undefined. I can’t seem to figure how to factor myself out of our long term relationship.