My son, Michael, is a math whiz. We realized he had an uncanny ability with numbers when,
at the age of two, he had a firm grasp of number one and number two. I'm not bragging. But once, when
he had the stomach flu, I saw him do numbers 3, 4, 5 and 6. All at the same time!
He absolutely loves anything to do with math and spends his days immersed in trigonomic functions and quadratic approximations.
I've even seen him having fun with determinants... although I'm not exactly sure what that means.
I don't know where he gets this gift. It certainly wasn't from me. I had trouble making it through algebra.
And even though I almost always had the correct answer, I couldn't tell you how I did it. I once asked Mike why
they took perfectly good numbers and made them into letters. His answer, "Because they can. That's y."
His sister, Jenny, inherited my math genes. Once, on a math test in the 2nd grade, she was asked... "Does an apple
take 10 minutes, 30 minutes or two hours to eat?" Her answer was "4 o'clock". Now that, I understand!
At any rate, Michael loves to play with numbers. He'll take two seemingly unrelated things and make them into something
really annoying. A few months ago, he said "You know mom if you take my age and multiply it by your weight.... Wow!
That's a really big number!" I could have explained how little boys should be seen and not heard, but all I could
manage was "Shut up!"
Ever since he turned 12, Mike's decided that the bathroom is the perfect place to do his math. It makes sense,
because that's where it all began. He can do number one and number two while computating a few derivatives.
Although... I'm hoping he'll brush up on his geometry and calculate the proper trajectory for number
one. He just doesn't seem to have the hang of that one yet.
