JOPLIN, Mo. —
Sometimes when things don’t make sense to me, when I need someone to show me the way, I turn to Jimmy Buffett.
Jimmy, like me, went to Catholic School. Jimmy, like me, tends to be laid back and likes to let things sort of just come his way. Jimmy, unlike me is very wise. And very rich.
As far as I’m concerned, if a guy tends to be laid back and let things come his way and still manages to become very rich, it wouldn’t hurt to turn to him for advice every now and then. Of course, I don’t know Jimmy, so I can’t pick up a phone and chat with him. When I need him, I turn to his music.
One night last week, my wife was helping our 12-year-old daughter, Emma, with her math homework. At one point, my wife and Emma ran into a tough problem, so they hollered at me. I got up from my chair in the living room, where I had been watching the St. Louis Cardinals lose again, and walked into the kitchen.
Me: What can I do for you, my dear ladies?
Wife: Shut up and read this problem.
Me: (Reading the problem) Durrrr.
Wife: Does that make any sense to you?
Me: Sorry. No speak the English. Me go back watch team suck.
The math problem my wife and Emma were having trouble with appeared to be written in a different language. It might have been ancient Egyptian or maybe a long since defunct Native American tribal language. Either way, I didn’t have a clue what it meant, let alone how to solve it.
So I turned to a Jimmy Buffett song for help. The song I turned to is one in which Jimmy asks the musical question “Math Sucks.”
“Don’t worry Emma,” I said. “You just tell your teacher that Jimmy Buffett says ‘math sucks’ and everything will be OK.”
As it turns out, Emma did not have to tell her teacher that Jimmy says “math sucks.” I guess Emma’s teacher, and the other junior high math teachers, probably sensed that people like me might heed the “Gospel According to Jimmy” so they came up with something called “Math Night.”
From what my wife said, “Math Night” was a chance for parents to meet their child’s math teacher and learn a bit about what they will be studying this year.
“You mean we have to go to math class?” I asked my wife.
“It’s not a class,” my wife said.
“Is it in the school?”
“Yes.”
“Do the teachers talk about math?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s a math class and I don’t want to go and you can’t make me.”
So Wednesday evening my wife, Emma and I drove to the junior high school. The math class was in the school cafeteria.
To butter us up, the math teachers served chocolate chip cookies. The math teachers all seemed to be very nice. Well, as nice as math teachers can be. But, still, I was suspicious.
When we set down at our table I waited for one of the math teachers to assign me homework. Or worse, go to the front of the class and “show my work.”
But that didn’t happen. All the math teachers did was give us some pointers on how to help our kids with their homework. The main way to help our kids, the teachers said, was to go to the math book website, click on some stuff and let someone appear on the screen and tell you how to do the homework.
And that was it. No talk about square roots. No uneven fractions. And no X equals Y and all I had to do was let things come my way.
Thank you, Jimmy.
Address correspondence to Mike Pound, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802, or via e-mail at mpound@joplinglobe.com.
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