Friday, December 14, 2012

Fiscal Shmiscal

I have never had an aptitude for math, which is why I can be of little help with this fiscal cliff business.

I do know that if one's expenses exceed one's income, there will be a lot of yelling. But beyond that, I rely on Charlie to keep us on the financial straight and narrow (with emphasis on that last).

Which is why I propose the math teachers from my past travel to Washington to assist Congress and President Obama with this terrifying but surely fixable mess.

First up: Miss Owsley (7th grade geometry, with fractions and decimals thrown in somewhere): She was mad for dissecting shapes with a yellow grease pencil on an overhead projector. Students used string and chalk to draw their parabolas on the blackboard. (I remember the vocabulary but none of the concepts.)

Miss O. was quite old, having taught my brothers, 7 and 10 years older than I, in the same classroom. She may have trilled like the actress Deborah Kerr, but she knew her stuff and never gave up hope that one day, numbers would make sense to me. They didn't, but I propose that she go to Washington and start grease penciling her way through the country's budget mess. (I am fairly certain that I flunked her final but was allowed to move on because another year would've killed her. That, my friends, is called compromise.)
 
Secondly: Mr. Long, 9th grade Algebra. He had very nice hair and readily surmised that I was undone by algebraic (FOIL!) formulas. He arranged for a 10th grader, Carlynn, to be my year-long tutor. They were both enthusiastic teachers, convinced that I would eventually get this numbers thing. And while that never happened, they never gave up, so I'm sending Mr. Long and Carlynn to start the fix.

Lastly, Mrs. Barnes (10th and 11th grade math, the last remedial): With her sharp mind and New Yawk accent, she could definitely balance the budget (and yell loudly while doing it). I think what this country needs is more people like Mrs. Barnes. With humor, gimlet eye, and an astounding grasp of mathematics, she can make straight our fiscal paths.

Into the mix, I volunteer my brother the M.B.A. (definitely the right guy to be your numbers man) and Charlie (also with an M.B.A. but, more importantly,  having fiscally prudent DNA strands in abundance).

And there's Jan from church, who can launch a Vacation Bible School program for 300 kids on $19.99 because she knows how -- and where -- to source her deals. And there's Marilyn, who can create art from tinsel and fairy dust, sell it and raise buckets of money for charity.

It can be done, people.

Just not by me.



 

2 comments:

Nancy said...

Sounds like a plan to me, and a far better one than anything I have heard out of Washignton D.C. of late. I am still trying to figure out when it became okay to spend more than you have. Guess that is the "new" math they were always trying to teach when I was in school!

Judie said...

As you know, this is MY KIND OF POST!!!

I just don't understand why people don't realize that it takes our tax money to run the country, and pay the bills. It really is simple math.