Word Problems

I believe that we are all born being good at something.  Algebra is NOT my something, but more specifically, word problems.  That's a shame since I love words so much.

This past Monday, while enjoying what I like to call my weekly board meeting with some ladies (and I use that term loosely since we go from quite proper to down right Archie Bunkerish at the drop of a hat) that I've had the privilege of not only attending high school with but also renewing our friendships some 30 years later.  We meet at a local Mexican restaurant for dinner and $2.50 margaritas, I call it a board meeting because I consider them to be important members of my board of advisers.

You may wonder what I mean by board of advisers.  Well, we all have a board of advisers, you just may  not admit it.  Your board is the group of people that you consult with during your lifetime on issues that you want to bounce around, and think about out loud.  Your board members give you opinion, advice, warning or simply ridicule you for the topic in general.

During your lifetime the members of your board will change.  Some will drop off your board, others will come on, it's an ongoing thing.  Some are lifetime members and when they're taken from this earth you can still hear their voice giving you advice even on topics you've never gotten to discuss with them.

During our board meeting this past Monday, one of our group received an email from her sister who was needing assistance with a word problem from a college course she is taking.  What better group of people to assist than a table of women who'd  been drinking adult beverages and only had paper napkins and two pens between the four of them to solve it with?  At least we all had access to calculators on our smart phones.

As best as I can recollect the problem went something like this:
John makes $7.50 an hour as a Security Guard and $16 an hour as a Landscaper.  He worked 50 hours last week and made $560.65+/- ( can't remember the exact amount).  How many hours did he work at each job?  Oh, and show your work.

I go to jotting down the basic information while signaling the waiter that I was in need of a club soda and another margarita.  He sees us all jotting down figures and wondering aloud what kind of a goober John must be that he is working two jobs and is still only bringing in less than $600 per week on what I have to assume are before tax dollars.  Perhaps he wasn't good at math.

Either way we are ciphering and chatting and using our Cash Cab lifelines and phoned one of our members son asking him to lend a hand.  Another member actually took a cursory look about the dining room to see if she thought any of the other patrons might have that math teacherish look about them.

We finally end up with the answer with absolutely no help from me..at all...but it turns out there was a bit of skepticism with the "show your work" portion since the Jethro Bodine method of goezintuits was used to solve the problem.

It lead to a night of hilarity and our waiter questioning exactly what we were doing.  He actually said aloud to me, "I thought you were doing your taxes."  Seriously?....on a paper napkin, in a restaurant throwing back margaritas?  I think not.

His assumption shed some light on another type of word problem that we as men and women have tried to solve throughout the ages.  Communication.

I find that I myself am more of a basic math kind of girl when it comes to communication.  1 + 1 must equal 2, shouldn't it?  Texting and messaging turn conversation into Algebra for me.

Yes does not always mean yes and no answer while to me means "no", just means "no answer" or I just got distracted by something and forgot we were talking, or the light just turned green and I can't text and drive.  Technology has really saved us some time by allowing us to really multitask huh!

Emotion and inflection are also missing from words when it comes to texting and messages.  That is unless you decide to go ALL CAPS on somebody and give the impressing you're shouting out your words.

Then there are Emoji's. They can sometimes get your point across, but when you really want just the right one, say a hand shooting a bird for instance, you're let down every time.

Apparently what I need to do is give up on the verbal form of communication, ride the technology wave and give up on trying to convince people to lend a human element to their conversation by actually taking a moment to call.  Instead I should come up with all the Emoji's you ever wanted but were never available before type of app.  That might actually be kinda fun!

What kind of Emoji's would you like to see?