The Miscellany News

Welcome one, welcome all. Today is the Ides of March for many young hopeful students in mathematics. Just last Friday, these students displayed bright, joyous countenances. They were fountains of youth and buckets of delight. They were often found mentioning happy topics like friends, family and a good day of Deece fries. But my friends, a mathematics midterm has stolen that previous joy from them. Now, these students are no longer feeling integreat, and we must hear their delirious calls and mourn their sanity, lost to nothing more than numbers.

That, my friends, is a poorly written eulogy I wrote for myself and my compatriots. We’ve spent the weekend battling this math midterm. We have suffered. Endured. Overcome? Not really. Did you know I used to know math? I could control math. Tell it what to do. Where to go. Give it relationship advice about its Xs and philosophical advice about its whos, whats and Ys. I was the conductor on a train to Happyville, and the only person on board was me. Math was my tool. I used it like a hammer and I was Bob the Builder in a bright yellow hat and stupid checkered shirt.

But math and I are frenemies now. It betrayed me. By just trying to derive, I have been derided by little numbers on a page. I’ve spent an entire weekend thinking about math and it’s driven me mad. If this is the nuthouse, I’m in it. My walls are made of almonds and I bought my table from Mr. Peanut’s factory. My closet’s chestnut, my brain’s roasting on an open fire, and I pecan’t do this anymore. Math has made me look like a dog in an ASPCA commercial with doleful eyes staring into a camera, begging to be saved. Or better yet, a bad attempt at an Oliver Twist-inspired all-you-can-eat restaurant commercial, where Oliver is played by a monotone middle-aged man who thinks that you certainly can have some more. You can have some more if you stop right into Endless Meats Burger Eats right off the interstate right next to the biggest gas station in the entire state of Oklahoma. But seriously, I beg, could you spare just a dollar? Or a clone of me who is also smarter than me and a math genius? Could you genetically engineer me to be better? If we ignore every single bioethical issue and advance technology 100 years, I’ll harvest a smarter clone.

Math is simply too difficult now. It did me dirty. It did me the “before” photo from “Hoarders.” It did me no amount of OxiClean, no quantity of delicious TidePods, unfixable stain level dirty. It did me dirty like OJ Simpson’s dried-up blood glove and also his morality. He didn’t commit the murder, but hypothetically if he did, according to his own novel, “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer,” he would have done it exactly how it was done. Rest in peace.

But there is no peace. Because math has taught me one horrifying reality of life: we must conform. Forget about a liberal arts education, forget about learning, even forget about thinking. Don’t think. Just follow formulas. Don’t try to be inventive and use logic to get an answer. This isn’t “Shark Tank.” You’re not asking for $1,000,000 in exchange for 10 percent ownership of your SillyBandz knockoff, GoofyTies. You’re asking for an answer in exchange for hours of your time and a few off-pitch shrieks. Math is “1984.” It quite literally is. 1984 is a number. But also a mindset. We must all just submit ourselves to the hivemind. All our thoughts must buzz off because math stings.

It pains me. I think I’ll have to seek out an injury attorney, perhaps one with a good jingle that juxtaposes with its emotionless commercial. And when you flip on the TV, I’ll be there to testify about how good Holmes & Motts was when I got hit by math at a stop sign. And just as I fade away, you’ll see an ad for Endless Meats Burger Eats and realize it will only take you a few hours to get all-you-can-eat undercooked burgers. And just like my mathematical abilities prior to my midterm, you’ll totally desert me, leaving me feeling raw rather than well done.