Mental Mathematics
Life was much simpler when I was a kid. Everything was transitive. The mathematics of my life was pretty basic. There was not much beyond a line segment, a circle, a square or a triangle. The DMAS seemed cool enough. But then I grew up. The equations became differential, (D(M(A)S) was parenthesised, the line lost its segment, the square turned into a quadrilateral, the triangle became a polygon and the circle turned vicious. The drawing and crossing of lines had a different meaning now. True and false became multiple-choice questions. And almost every time, I found myself checking "none of the above". I don't know the hows and whys, but the geometry of my life was distorted. Algebra was pretty smooth until I was asked to find the variable x. And after a few incipient calculations, I thought I had it. But one plain variable wasn't enough. The equations became quadratic, the numbers became irrational and the solution changed with the direction of inequalities...