Now, with a Bachelor of Science Computer Science (BSCS) with a minor in Mathematics, you'd think I'd know simple arithmetic.

But I have to admit that - although I wasn't aware of it - I had not understood the rules for mulitiplication until this morning, around 3 AM.

                                         


Yes, it's true, I've always known my multiplication tables - up through 12, and, like anybody else, I could use those to do larger sums in my head.

And I'd always known the simple rules about "a positive times a negative results in a negative; a negative times a negative results in a positive" - but I'd never UNDERSTOOD it until (as I said) this morning, sometime around 3 AM.

It came to me in a dream - I was actually teaching somebody else how to multiply, and we had started off with the simple matter of the use of the word "times"; come to think of it, I'd never actually really realized why we say TIMES until I had to figure it out while I was explaining it to the person in the dream (whoever it was).

Wow. Just like Jethro and his Gazintas - I had learned it by rote, and thus never had to learn what it meant.

Now, I am pretty sure that my teachers did, indeed, explain it to me, but since I had already learned the rules, I probably paid no attention to the explanation ("yeah, yeah, I know that already, see how smart I am? Let's get on with it") and thus missed the reason why things worked the way that they worked.

Lord, what a metaphor for my life! So busy thinking that I understood, and wanting to hurry through whatever was next, that I missed they "why" of everything!

And it's an extended metaphor, as well, because it wasn't until I had to explain it all to somebody else (at least, in my dream) that I understood why we say "times" and why a negative times a positive equals a negative.

They say you wind up teaching what you have to learn.

Now I just need to find somebody who wants me to teach them how to quit work and become a ski bum without starving....I'd love to learn that.