Deep in thought

By Dan Barber

Another Friday night and I sit in front of my computer and try to think up something clever to write about. But, alas the only thing leaking out of my brain is this drivel about nothing.

Last week I wrote about living life in my imagination… Perhaps everyone does that. When I was young I would sit in my math class in school and instead of paying attention to how division or algebra worked my mind would wander off and I would day-dream about exploring the distant hills I could see outside my classroom window. That is the reason to this day I can only divide using a calculator that was invented by some kid from my generation who actually paid attention in math class.

The reason I believe that everyone day-dreamed in math is because of the popularity and abundance of calculators now available everywhere, including calculator apps (applications) on smartphones and any computer. I remember when these magical devices were very expensive, but now they can be bought for just a couple of bucks in any convenience store. When I was a kid a wrist-watch calculator would have come in handy for math tests.

Today, if kids are caught day-dreaming in class they might be labeled as suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).  However, they may have laser-focus on any subject that is of interest to them. All of my grandsons are expert video game players and all of my granddaughters can type with just their thumbs faster on their smartphones than I can type with all ten of my fingers…but they are all smart because I believe they inherited their ADD from me, or they could just be human.

One time when my son was in high school he asked me for help with his Algebra homework I started to panic until he explained the purpose of the Algebraic formula the teacher tasked him with… to find the number of newspaper pages that were needed in a tabloid sized publication to meet a 40 percent news copy to 60 percent advertising ratio!  At that point  in my career, that was the first thing I did on Monday mornings after my newspaper’s advertising manager gave me the week’s run sheet for ad copy! I thought, “Crap, I’ve been doing Algebra for years and didn’t know it!” The lesson here is to pay attention enough in math class so when you use your smartphone's calculator later in life you will know what you are really doing.

The best classes I had at John A. Rowland High School where I had laser focus were Remedial English (because the regular English teachers thought I was too stupid for their regular English classes), Drama, and one year of typing. 

Perhaps I’m still too stupid for regular English classes, but that’s why editors were invented and excelled in regular English classes. Drama gave me the confidence to “act” like I knew what I was doing in life which allowed me to perform in a successful and award-winning career as a professional journalist/writer/day-dreamer. Typing gave me the tools which allowed the information or day-dreams to leak from my brain to the empty page.

The lesson from this blog to parents is…If your child’s school counselors tell you that your son or daughter is suffering from ADD, immediately request they be enrolled in Remedial English, Drama and Typing (today they call it “keyboarding” because another smart kid paid attention in math class and invented the computer with spell & grammar check for all of us slow learners to use in our careers).