Two times Nine is…..umm…is…er…
I think I should add a few incidents with Mummy. Daddy’s been hogging all the space till now. Not that there’s much that transpired with her and me together…..I was always a Daddy’s girl…a tomboy. Anyway, Mummy was, as all mummies are, my teacher at home. Very bad really, when it came to Math, because she was short on patience and I was short on memory, especially when it came to Multiplication Tables. By the end of an interminably long study hour, I’d manage to finally get through one Table and escape. Oh yes! Escape it was. For my face, which would be burning with the tight slaps she’d land so precisely on my small cheeks, and the palms that got whacked with a ruler, or my legs that got thwacked with a ladle or whatever was in her hands. Getting away was the greatest relief of the day.
Poor thing, she must have been relieved too! When I think back to the almost stupid way I’d stare at her, while I stumbled and hemmed and hawed my way through the same old Table day after day, my heart goes out to her…..any one would go crazy. So I had to find a method to remember my Multiplcation Tables and avoid a beating. And what a way I devised!!
I’d generally wait till she was in the kitchen instructing the cook and doing odds and ends. I would stand against the door jamb, in the pantry and Jasper Nana would stand behind me hidden from her view. Then I’d very quickly and very loudly say the whole Table and hey without a mistake! Jasper Nana’s prompting got me a lot of praise and shorter study hours, till the day she decided to quiz me. My prompter failed me. Ah! It was back to the grind and a good slapathon.
I still dislike Math!
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I think, I write. I see, I write. I remember, I write. I read something, I hear something, I write. I am happy, sad, angry, indifferent, I write...like the babbling brook I flow on and on...like the leaden cloud I pour out my thoughts.
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