Last night, Hubby and I were lying in bed chatting. I know, it seems harmless. The problem is that Hubby and I really like talking to each other. So about half the time we’re lying in bed chatting, we are dooming ourselves to a next day filled with Badness and Fatigue.
Because, as mentioned, we are chatting. Where chatting does not equal falling asleep, winding down, or preparing for restfulness. It equals alert intrigued swapping and building of ideas and opinions and theories and memories. It is the anti-sleep, and can mean a pile of 2am “okay, no really we need to fall asleep… … … … so would it work if you took the value for…”
And we’re off again.
And again.
(And again.)
Last night, we were discussing math. One thread specifically on what math looks like in your head. When you’re trying to solve a problem, what do you “see”?
Which is when I confirmed what I suspected, which is that, when solving a math problem, there is no better place to be than inside my husband’s head. He may sometimes live amongst stacks of magazines, and keep a pile of shorts beside the bed like a feral animal (who wears pants), but when it comes to problem solving, there is no tidier place than my husband’s brain.
His description:
“Well, when I see numbers, they’re organized on a line in stacked blocks of 10. There are special markers for where the powers of 2 are. And of course A-F is overlaid for hex #s. Those all go left to right. Then there are the negative numbers, they run to the left, and down. Except if I’m working with negatives, then I reverse it.
Everything is colour coded too, but you can’t see the colours because they’re in your head. But it’s there.”
He then proceeded to rattle off offhand the powers of 2 from 0 to the 17th power. Hazard/Job perk of being a programmer.
While I enjoy doing mental math, when I see numbers in my head, they bear a closer resemblance to how they appear on Sesame Street. You know. Like they were rendered by someone on acid. They’re sort of floaty, sometimes with a background pattern.
Hubby’s a fan of this. (My representation of numbers, not acid.) When I described my mental math process, he said it sounds like I do math very symbolically, higher on theory, lower on rote. But I tend to get the right answers when I do math in my head, which I guess is a point in support of the Sesame Street Acid Trip Method.
However.
When it comes to division, it turns out that he is a dirty hippy anarchist. He may be all sequenced spitshine for most functions, but division? He’s a mess. When I divide in my head, I do long division. AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL. My mental long-division is done with a sharpened number 2 pencil and I would be happy to turn in my work with my answer.
When Husband does division, apparently he just tends to guesstimate multiply, 9 times out of 10.
You think you know someone.
“Close enough.”
I guess I found his pile of shorts.
This is stupendous.