Minus Two

My mathematics teacher cost me two points on my school achievement score.

I remembered the number.

I also liked him.

At that age, those two facts should have been enemies. Students are supposed to admire teachers who help their grades and resent the ones who do not. Yet he had a way of making the classroom feel larger than mathematics, mostly through jokes and strange sentences that remained long after the formulas had faded.

He had a nickname among students, which I will leave out here. I will also leave out his name. What matters is that he could produce exaggerated threats so theatrical that nobody heard them as real threats. The class remembered the rhythm more than the words.

Years later, I could still recall his voice more easily than many lessons.

The two lost points had mattered at the time. Numbers always matter when you are inside the system that produces them. But memory kept a different account. It carried forward his humor, his way of looking at life, and the fact that I enjoyed being in the room even when the grade did not help me.

Mathematics should have made the result simple.

Minus two is minus two.

The teacher was more complicated.