Our/Are

Its strange how higher education will remind you of little things you learned when you were in grade two. In grade two, I suffered from a self-invented form on number confusion. The morning of my first math test (ever) i despaired. I wailed to my mother that i didn't know the difference between six and nine, that I was sure to confuse them.

6

9

I spent the morning agonising, fearing that I would mix up the loops. Top, bottom, bottom, top, which was which, what value could each hold! Plsu, these twop nastly littel numsers only had one point each. Numbers are easy. Two has two points.

2

Top and bottom, see? Three's got three of them.

3

top, middle bottom.

4

tom bottom, left and right. Or, two on the top if you liek to draw your fours that way, bottom and the right side.

5

four corners, plus one more because it's five. But six, the wiley six, he had only one point, and he looked just like nine, only upside down. And, in my mind, I had no clue which was which.

What question nearly made me lose my shit when I was five years old? Six plus nine. What were the chances? It didn't matter that these two numbers could be eleuded - because, six plue, nine plus six, it didn't matter which was which, they were just symbols - combined they were fourteen!

I didn't get perfect.

But, more than that, I remember writing in my journal one day. The evidence of this still exists, in some dusty box up in an old garage, where my mother has hidden away all sorts of embarassing material should i ever bring a lover home - just in case; that was mom's policy, you never knew when you might need something again.
I was playing catch with my friends at recess. lacking anything else of note to discuss, and knowing that I was only allowed to write about the black knight fighting dragons twice a week (which usually turned into an excuse for me to make journal time into art class), i thought it would make make a find entry. I discussed how our ball was accidently tossed over the fence into the yard of a neihbouring apartment complex. It looked something liek this:

"Are bull gt Fentsid"

That day in class we had an assistant in to help the class. I didn't trust her. To put this into words may be difficult, but allow me my attempt: I was too young to recognise racism. I didn't know what it was, and I never questions skin colour. I saw people as tall/short, fat/skinny, adn that was about it. I didn't know what "foriegn" meant. But this teacher's assistant, her last name had two parts. It was like it was two names in one! That, I decided, was not to be trusted (notwithstanding the fact that my best friend's name held this same quality). When she kindly explained to me that "Are," although phonetically nearly acceptable wasn't the word I was looking for and rubbed it out for me (the sheer injustice! It was my journal and I was to write it as I liked!) replacing it with those letters "O U R" I took immediate offence. I waited patiently, glaring down at the offensive nearly written word, gleaming in a hand that wasn't my own, brazen on the page, waiting for her to move on to the next table. Glancing over my shoulder, sneakily, but with viscious contempt, I rubbed out the offending word myself, leaving a greasy dark stain across the page and penciled in as hard as i could

A

R

E

in big capital letters. It was ARE ball, than you very much, and would remain that way.

Our children are future
Are children our future

Really, it's all the same to me.