METHimatics

earlier in my student life, i was so obsessed with mathematics. the obsession kind of started when i first learned the multiplication table seen at the back of most spiral notes during the 90's, although i never memorized it because i believed that memorizing does not mean you actually learned it. it's not history. i was astonished that if you multiply 3 by 5 and if you multiply 5 by 3 you'd get the same answer. most probably it did not have the same impact on other students as it did on me, i mean how great is that? then as the school year advanced, the obsession evolved. i was introduced to X and Y. i took it. easy. i was always the school representative for quiz bee. all four years of high school. i never won, though. i was just obsessed, i wasn't crazy. oh, i won once. 1st year. 2nd place. never got the 1st place like all three other representatives from my school. but i never felt sad on not winning. i was just genuinely happy learning it. more advanced than my classmates because i got to do some one-on-one training with the instructors. high school geometry? easy. high school algebra? no problemo. there was a year when a certain training focused on circles. radius. diameter. circumference. pi. area. arc. chord. tangent. sector. segment. central angle. inscribed angle. secant. intercepted arc. whatever the circle has. i knew it. by heart. i was so obsessed that i was holding a scratch paper and a pen, while walking home, atop the alitao bridge, solving things. i even created my own theorem. i called it PATOREAN theorem, obviously referenced from Pythagorean theorem, which i really thought i mastered its high school level. i created my own formulas. if Ms. Laguador give us 3 formulas to solve a problem, i'd do it with just one, my own. i didn't share it. it was personal. Math was the only subject that i never cheated during high school. i used it for everyday other things. it helped me understand even non-mathematical stuff. math. it was almost automatic to me. easy. really easy.

but there was a time that i stopped. i couldn't figure out when, but i stopped. i don't know what happened. it's not that i lost interest in it. it's just that maybe i lost the obsession. sometimes i wonder, what if the obsession never ceased? where could i have been now? what could i have been? it was wrong that i stopped. i have so many questions right now that i think i could've answered readily. but no. all i know is that right now, i'm having trouble subtracting big numbers. fuck me, right? yesterday, my brain hanged for about a minute over a change the counter gave me at the laundry shop. i gave her 500 then she gave 350 and asked for a 20 and gave me some coins. i was like, wait, what the hell is happening?

napangiti na lang ako dahil naalala ko si batman at sinabing, "ay sya, lugi ka ngay-on".

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October 7, 2013 at 12:18pm