Shhh! Scribbler at Work

To Sum It Up

(prompt: 'addict' 10/8/18)

He says it's all the fault of his Maths teacher in High School. You know the type. Hour-glass figure (maybe more than a touch top heavy); blonde curls cascading down her back; a face destined to grace women's magazine front covers - maybe even billboards?

And when she reached high on the blackboard to physically demonstrate mathematical solutions, the heights her short, short skirts reached were the stuff dreams were made of - especially for a roomful of hot and sweaty teenage boys with hormones raging to match their vivid imaginations. With many dirty little giggles, they lustfully called her Miss X in recognition of her delightfully decahedronic dimensions.

Had Miss X been of the same or even similar calibre to his German teacher, there is no doubt he would ever have embraced the world of numbers so passionately and well. Professor Wankendorf's balding head and sparcely populated chin, and even the spectacles teetering on the tip of his warty nose provided small distraction from the paralysis that gripped his class two minutes into each and every one of his mandatory sessions. 'German-ness is next to Godliness' he insisted constantly, despite the rolling eyes of his captive class.

Meanwhile, back in the Pleasure Parlour (as the Maths class was referred to by its many afficionados), he would later often wonder how many breathless students followed in the charming footsteps of their teacher as passionately as himself - a permanent convert.

He says the whole class snapped into various roles of mathematical addiction - some slanted seriously towards subtractionism, while others muddled through a myriad of multipletractionism. Fleeting glimpses emerged of defiantly divisible deviations, but overall, there was a majority metamorphosisii into a bright new shiny group of 'Numbers' men.

For Old McLarsen it all worked out wondrously well. The 'numbers' man's Missus was a wordsmith and so just like the old rhyme,

'Jack Sprat could eat no fat

His wife could eat no lean

And so betwixt the two of them

They licked the platter clean'

So it came to pass, for the next half century and more,

Old MLarsen need not shout,

Pose him a problem and his calculator comes out,

Sum it up, and the Missus will spout,

Word and number answers beyond any doubt.