All was fine until the polynomials showed up

“Mom, I need your help with my homework tonight,” Evan announced as I picked him up from school.

Then, the words no parent wants to hear: “It’s algebra.”

Algebra. Not much scares me these days (except wolf spiders, poison ivy, and an ineffective Congress,) but algebra still paralyzes me with fear. At my age, I’ve forgotten much more math than I remember. In fact, I think algebraic concepts were among the very first things in my brain to shrivel up and die during childbirth.

Twenty-plus years and three children later, my memory of algebra hasn’t returned and I can honestly say I haven’t missed it. The way I see it, you’re inviting trouble when you allow letters and numbers to fraternize with one another anyway.

After dinner, Evan began to work on his math homework. It wasn’t long before he ran into problems (I know, I know…bad pun.)

I looked at his homework but it might as well have been written in Chinese. It made just as little sense to me.

I stared at the problems, incredulous that I’d ever been capable of figuring them out at any point in my life. No matter how long I stared at them, though, I could not remember what to do with them. Which do I solve first: the addition and subtraction or the multiplication? What about the x’s and y’s? What am I supposed to do with those? And what’s the deal with those tiny numbers that like to hang out above and to the side of other numbers? Those things are just plain annoying.

Why can’t math be more like language arts? If you can’t remember a grammar rule or how to spell a word, you can at least look it up in a stylebook or a dictionary. There’s no reference book for math problems.

I consider myself to be an intelligent person, but not being able to figure out my son’s seventh grade homework makes me feel uneducated and, worse, incredibly old. What would I forget next – how to tie my shoes or eat with a fork?

Even though I did not want to allow myself to be beaten by my son’s algebra homework, I hadn’t been able to successfully solve a single equation. Still, this wasn't my homework so why should I have to continue to struggle with it? I’d already passed seventh grade!

I decided to give up and tell Evan that I can’t help him with his homework. One of the perks of maturity is that we no longer have to be so concerned with how competent we appear to someone else. We’re more relaxed with ourselves and therefore less likely to feel insecure by admitting our shortcomings.

Or something like that.

While it’s probable that I care less about my shortcomings and more about not spending the rest of my night with an algebra book, I felt proud that I was able to drop the Supermom façade and admit that Evan’s homework was beyond me.

I couldn't abandon Evan, though. Solving algebra successfully would require the big guns, a secret weapon, and an ace-in-the-hole.

I asked his older brother to help him.

Who says I’m too old to figure this stuff out?