Letters from a Dyscalculia Veteran of the Calculus Wars

Prologue

This is part two of an ongoing series. What follows is a series of letters to the front lines.

They are written by me, Old Guy Steve, from the safety of the present to Young-Steve, a POW (Perpetually Over-Whelmed) detainee in the re-education classes of the 1970s to 1990s USA Mathematics Internment:

Not every battle was lost. Some were won. A few were glorious. Most were not.

For years, under the baleful gaze of Chalk-Board-Ogres, Young-Me sat in those wooden and plastic chairs, peering down into the dark textbook trenches and chewing the pink eraser off his #2 pencil, while the coefficient of misunderstanding stole the focus from his eyes.

The trinomial torturers, assaulting in formation, chanted their battle cry:

"Self evident! It is so, therefore it is so."

Young Me didn't know what was happening to him.

I know his torture. I know it's too late to help him now. But I write these letters anyway. I write them for me and for anyone else who sat, or who is sitting, in those same chairs...

Letter 1

To: Steve, Age 13. Algebra 1 (Victory! HS Algebra in 8th Grade.)

Dear Young-Steve,

You made it. You got onto the varsity math squad, eighth graders at your middle school, invited to take High School Algebra I. Except your invitation never arrived. You weren’t invited and had to ask your Pops, a science teacher at your same school, why you weren’t allowed to take Algebra.

You won’t understand that whole bs deal for a long time...fifty-two years worth of long-time to be exact.

Young-Steve, all 6 foot 4 inch, 115 pounds of gangly you, is hiding behind a not-so-confident class-clown act. It started last year in the seventh grade when you began feeling lost with the slow burn of a frustrating reality: the world is not wired for you, Dude.

You’re an awkward, self-conscious, giant string-bean who’s seeing yourself with an external self-view for the very first time. Seeing ourselves the way our classmates see us is literally bat-sh¡t terrifying.

It’s a feeling that makes us or anyone want to disappear. Except we never actually blend in. Just when we’re almost hidden, we open our big mouth and our brains leak out.

That hopeless effort to camouflage your true self from the world so you fit in? I now know it’s called masking. The energy it costs you is literally wiping you out, and it’s why you’re exhausted.

Your eighth-grade algebra teacher didn’t want a smart-ass in his class, but your IQ is in your student record. So you got in. Take the win, you’re on the freaking Algebra Team.

Back to that algebra: You. Are. Killing. It. You’re devouring basic algebra like it’s Brain Cheetos. Homework? ...scribbled in the hallway ten minutes before class with an A+ grade on every assignment. Your math book lives in your locker. Who needs it. You're feeling pretty good about your bad math self. And honestly, you should. You’re earning it.

Write down how this feels. Take a mental photograph of it. A panorama. Make a whole photo album. Seriously, you’re going to need it later.

Your algebraic equations are a playground seesaw. In your mind, you move a bit here or there, kicking some out from under, or adding more on top until the math teeter-totter is balanced on both sides.

Remember back in 5th grade when old-man, wack-job, Mr. Pelter demonstrated how the Base-6 number system works? The pattern clicked. For the rest of the school day, when you weren’t dodging his chalk missiles, you sat there lost at your desk converting numbers between every system from Base-2 to Base-10.

Skills, Dude. True skills.

Your algebra class is clicking just like that for you, now. Algebra makes sense to your visual, pattern-loving brain. This class is actually the height of your math wizardry. Just the one class.

What's coming doesn't work that way. What's coming is going to ask your brain to do things it’s not wired to do. Miswired, Dude. For real.

Nobody, including us, will understand why for a very long time.

Bummer, right? I just popped your innocent eighth grade balloon. But, not to worry, cleaning-up and moving-on from Life’s Popped Water Balloons becomes just one of your awesome superpowers. Just you wait.

Enjoy Algebra 1. Because, Young-String-Bean-Steve ...you're genuinely good at this part.

Cheers,

— Old Guy Steve, Age 65

PS — First skirmish: decisive victory. The math ogre’s minions didn't see you coming. Neither did you. Enjoy the view from the high ground. It's temporary.

Letter 2

To: Steve, Age 15. June of 9th Grade. Algebra 2 (Defeat & Capture)

Dear Young-Steve,

About that Algebra 2, Final Grade: D+

That D+ Grade is not a character flaw. You’re as relieved that Freshman year is over, as you are pissed-off about the damn D+.

And that “plus sign?” ...I hear you saying:

“The ’plus’ is mocking me...like it’s...D plus st00pid!”

Come on, Guy. You aced Classical Humanities, English, and Biology. You were the only Freshman who didn’t drop Biology...and you freaking crushed it. Four total points missed across six exams, full extra-credit points, for the entire year.

Quirky Mr. Hoke loved you. Your classic dissection project with both ears left on the fetal pig was hilarious. Hoke actually laughed. You won him over, Dude.

Think of your D+ in Algebra 2 as data. In 1975, no one has the vocabulary for what is actually happening in your brain when the math gets abstract and the patterns disappear.

Between Algebra 1 and Algebra 2, the math left the visible world and went somewhere dark where your brain couldn’t follow.

Please give yourself a break. You're going to spend decades humiliated and assuming the D+ was your fault.

It wasn't.

Hang in there, Young-Steve.

You always land on your feet. Like a cat, but more like a dog. A big, patient, lovable, nose-under-the-gate Bernese mountain dog who just keeps showing up. You’ll understand the reference someday.

Cheers,

— Old Guy Steve, Age 65

P.S. — Second engagement: catastrophic defeat. POW status confirmed. The math ogre minions are not done with you.

Letter 3

To: Steve, Age 16. June of 10th Grade. Geometry POW. The Great Escape Plan, Code Name: The Notebook Gambit.

Dear Young-Steve,

Let’s be honest about something. What you figured out in Self-Study Geometry class was beautiful. Sure you gamed the system. But you studied the system, figured it out, and used it to your full benefit.

Racing ahead, completing the full handwritten notebook, making it beautiful, earning maximum presentation points was brilliant. Sure, you absorbed zero percent of the actual geometry content, but it wasn’t cheating.

It was accommodation design. At 16, without any support system or clinical language or any knowledge that such things existed, you built a workaround for a brain that couldn't access the material through the standard delivery method. You found a path. Protected your GPA. Survived with a C.

Did you learn geometry? No! But you’re a sixteen-year-old neurodivergent kid doing what neurodivergent kids do when the system has no tools for them: you improvised.

I still laugh about the notebook. Enjoy your escape into Summer. The foreboding clouds of battle are already forming on the Fall horizon.

Cheers,

— Old Guy Steve, Age 65

P.S. — POW survival status: operational. The notebook gambit holds. Sometimes just surviving is its own kind of winning. Don't let anyone tell you different. And we’re still surviving thanks to a lifetime of improvised workarounds.

Letter 4

To: Steve, Age 16. Junior Year. Trigonometry, Decisive, Unexpected Victory

Dear Young-Steve,

Surprise! After Algebra 2's total destruction of your math confidence, and one year of notebook-gambit survival in Geometry POW camp, you're walking into Trig fully expecting annihilation. POW survival instincts engaged, zero expectations of actual math comprehension, notebook-gambit toolkit packed and ready...

Put the toolkit away. You're going to love this class.

Mr. Osworth answers the classroom wall phone, that ancient black box bolted to the wall: "Osworth's Brain Factory!" Or sometimes, ”Manny's Morgue; You Stab 'em, We Slab 'em," depending on his mood. The first day of class, you know this math teacher isn't threatened by smart-asses. He might actually be one.

Here's what's happening in Trig that wasn't in Algebra 2: you can see it. The angles. The slopes. The relationships. Sin, cos, tan aren’t floating abstract symbols. They're ratios with jobs. The kind of practical, visual, spatial jobs your brain was built for.

You tweak and use the traditional math mnemonic, Oscar Has A Hairy Old Ass: which stands for Opposite over Hypotenuse (O/H,) Adjacent over Hypotenuse (A/H,) and Opposite over Adjacent (O/A.) You will remember this for the rest of your life.

At age 65, I can confirm: it's still in there, fully retrievable. Turns out your brain stores things when they're attached to something visual and slightly inappropriate.

Trig final project: calculate the actual height of your school’s tower. Twenty minutes, your team: you spot the magic missing measurement. It’s the distance inside the building where the tower is centered above the foyer. You count the floor tiles from that spot to the building entry.

Outside, you place transit on tripod, level the bubble, sight the angle, run the math. It works. You saw the answer before you calculated it. The Pythagorean theorem snapping into place.

You get an A.

A genuine A. Not a notebook-gambit A. Not a survival A. The material made sense to your brain, and you earned it.

Savor it. You're not broken. You're a brain with a very specific cognitive profile that thrives on spatial relationships, practical applications, visual patterns.

What comes has none of those things. You already know this. That's why you're skipping Senior Year math. Your decision is not cowardice. It's the first truly intelligent military strategy of your education.

Smart move, Soldier. Today you won.

Cheers,

— Old Guy Steve

P.S. — Oscar Has A Hairy Old Ass. You'll thank me later.

Letter 5

To: Steve, Age 17. Pre-Calc, Pre-College Bicycle Summer (Reconnaissance Gone Wrong)

Dear Young-Steve,

I want to make sure this is on the record somewhere, because history deserves to know:

You rode your bicycle more than fifteen miles each way, in ninety-degree heat with the kind of East Coast Summer humidity that makes the air feel like warm soup, before your Summer job lifeguard shift started at midday, to sit in a community college pre-calculus class.

Every single day for three weeks until you just couldn’t do it anymore.

That is one of the most stubborn, determined, genuinely heroic things you will ever do. The fact that the heat index and the pre-calc combined to produce a result best described as a ”dismal failure" is completely beside the point. Trying is what matters.

You are not someone who gives up because something is hard. You are someone who rides thirty miles in 98-degree heat to attempt a thing you have every biological reason to avoid.

That quality is going to save you. More than once.

Cheers,

— Old Guy Steve, Age 65

P.S. — Reconnaissance mission: compromised by weather, heat index, and the cruelty of pre-calculus exposure. Your math confidence did not survive. Re-hydrate, Young-Steve. Re-hydrate.

Letter 6

To: Steve, Age 18, Freshman College Calculus, Battlefield Retreat (aka The Great Walkout)

Dear Young-Steve,

You're sitting in an arena lecture hall. Calculus 101. First day. First minute.

The professor saunters on stage and says:

”You've ALL had calculus in high school, so please turn to Chapter Nine. Let's get started."

And you close your book. And you stand up. Five hundred books slam shut. Five hundred seats snap upright in spring-loaded synchronicity. The muttering mass exodus heads with you toward the doors.

A river of crushed people, wounded by one salvo. Right then, it stung.

Here’s the thing, wounded Young-Steve. That walkout was the smartest thing you did all semester.

You dropped your Engineering major that same week. It was never going to fit. Your genius is pattern recognition, spatial relationship, visual imagery. Not beam-deflection load calculations.

The walkout didn't end your future. It redirected it.

And the calculus? Stay vigilant, it’s prowling out there. It’s still not done with you yet. Not by a long shot.

Cheers,

— Old Guy Steve, Age 65

P.S. — The war is not over. You just changed theaters. The calculus minions will find you again. Twice. But that, Soldier, is a story for another letter.

Dispatch

This is Part 2 in an ongoing, 8 part series about growing up undiagnosed, learning to decode my own wiring, and what it means to finally, at 65, understand the brain I've been living in my whole life.

Next up: The class that actually broke me. The industrial accident. The narcotics-laced phone call to my Calculus Commander from the Field Hospital — Intensive Care.

And the professional psychology diagnosis nobody was allowed to give me yet.

(I now know why ...which is yet another post.)

— Steve

P.S. — Please practice grace and kindness ...especially toward ourselves