Three Maths Lessons by Owen Townend

I Am Thinking of a Number

Mr Patel had a big bushy beard. It was mesmerising the way all that black fuzz scraped against the buttons of his blue work shirt, never once unsettling his green silk tie. He had a very energetic way of standing, moving back and forth on his heels and constantly jutting out his chin.

            “All right you lot,” he said to my class one day, “I am thinking of a number. Any guesses?”

            “Four?”

            “No.”

            “Eleven?”

            “Not a chance.”

            A quiet descended, broken only by the occasional knock on our low ink-stained tables or the click of a wonky chair rocking back. Mr Patel looked out at all of our faces, waggling his eyebrows.

            There were too many possibilities, more possibilities than the average junior school pupil could fathom. Still there was one last attempt at this seemingly impossible guessing game.

            “Three hundred and forty-six?” Nazeem asked. He scratched at his over-stretched school jumper in indecent places. No-one took Nazeem seriously.

            Still there was Mr Patel, mouth open and eyes wider than I had ever seen on an adult.

            “Yes,” he said, voice shaking slightly. “That’s, um, correct, Nazeem. Well done. Three hundred and forty-six. That was actually the number I was thinking of.”

            Nazeem wiggled in his seat with satisfaction, putting undue strain on the already cracked plastic.

            For a minute I thought Mr Patel was just humouring him but then I saw him lower himself onto his own felt chair and sigh.

            The number I thought but didn’t dare to say was thirty. I had got it from the digital clock above the whiteboard. The bell rang and that was that.

 

He Owns a Red BMW

 

One day a fat man with a limp and a bad wig came to our class. He was dressed in a fancy grey suit which seemed loose around his shoulders. According to our teacher, he was a mathematical genius.

            “This man can make calculations lightning fast,” she said. “He uses them every day in his business. He runs three companies and owns a red BMW. We are very lucky to have him visiting us today.”

            As he sneered at us from over his straggly white moustache, we began to test him.

            “Ten times fifteen?”

            He waved his hand dismissively. “Hundred fifty.”

            “Seventeen times a billion?”

            He flashed an incredulous glare. “Seventeen billy-on!”

            The teacher cleared her throat, expressing a desire to ask a proper question before this very important man blew a fuse.

            “How about four thousand and eighty-three divided by seventeen?” She emphasised ‘divided’ here as that was the subject we had just covered in our previous lesson.

            The man that could make lightning fast calculations paused. He blinked but the rest of his face refused to change. “Two four zero.”

            I had no idea if this was right at the time but noticed that the teacher continued to look at the man with a patient smile on her face. When no further answer proved forthcoming, she turned away fully.

            The man squinted hard at the back of her head then left for his red BMW.

 

Aww Cute Angle

 

We were all making a fuss of the teaching assistant. She wore an amber sari and touched her circular spectacles as she regarded every one of us at a time. The noise of a dozen voices speaking at once must have been irritating but the clean white smile never left her face.

            I got my turn with her. “What’s an acute angle?”

            She waited a moment until she was sure I was done. Her expression brightened which suggested I had chosen my one question to her wisely.

            “An acute angle is less than a right angle,” she said then held up her forefinger, slightly curled. “When you hear ‘acute’ think ‘aww cute’ angle.”

            In a moment, the sage teaching assistant had turned her attention onto Nazeem who was wiping spit from the corners of his mouth.

            To this day I can’t recall her name or why she was so special in that moment. Still her curled finger sometimes occurs.