New Nemesis

I have met my new nemesis and it is Algebra!  I was never good at "letter math" when I was younger and it doesn't seem that age has helped any.

 I sat there as a young man, not much older than The Boy, discussed his rules for the class and then broke us down into groups to work on a problem.

And a problem it was!  Why do I care how many hands are shaken if everyone in a room shakes hands?  Can't we just shake hands and have done with it?  

Yeah, yeah, I know, that isn't the point.  It still seems silly to me.

However, then I came home to my wonderful boys and they made it all make sense to me.  I even figured out how to modify a formula from increasing numbers to decreasing numbers; hint:  (n+1) becomes (n-1) when you want to subtract.  This was discovered by a man named Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, widely acknowledged as the most famous mathematician of all time.  (There's a fact I could have gone the rest of my life without!)

Math won't be so scary.  I have my boys to help me and a good brain on my shoulders.  I should be able to get this!

Hear that Myron?  No matter what you try to disguise yourself as, I am on to you!  At the end of the day, I will win, and you will eat my dust!