JusJoJan Day 14: Quadratic Erotica?

Just Jottin’ Through January!

So, do you have any confessions to make this fine Wednesday night?

No?

Maybe it’s just me, then –

Because I do have a confession to make. It’s an oldie but a goody…

Ready?

OK…deep breath…here goes….another deep breath –

I wrote erotica in most of my high school mathematics classes.

Yup. Sure did.

To be fair, and in the interest of full disclosue, it was extremely bad erotica – like many things, erotica is better when you’ve got some experience, or at least a working knowledge of how the subject works – and, well, I didn’t. Not even a little bit.

Which, of course, led to vagueness and sometimes flat-out impossibility, even given that most of my characters weren’t human.

All writers need to start somewhere, right?

And so I started in high school math classes, and this is a big part of the reason why…

The Quadratic Beats. Public domain image, via Wikipedia.

No, I’m not joking. The quadratic formula was a catalyst for my foray into classroom eroticism. I felt an instinctive need to hide from that Big Scary Monster. I didn’t understand it, or what it was meant to do. My teachers simply said we were to learn it, and, if they talked about the why, it was quickly drowned out in problem after problem – none of which I could solve.

Yup, that’s right. Never, not once, in my high school career was I able to solve for x, when it came to the quadratic formula. It flummoxed me at every turn, and nothing seemed to change that. I was hopelessly lost, and I stayed that way. This was long before the advent of YouTube or the Internet, way back in the mid-80s, when I had the teacher and the textbook.

I definitely didn’t have this teacher to educate me….

Once, one of my teachers realized that I was writing far too many words in my notebook for it to be math-related. She came to my desk, and, with her teacher’s authority, took my notebook and began to read, while I tried very hard not to die of mortification – I wasn’t nearly confident enough to share freely, at that point in my life, and, even if I had been, I wouldn’t have chosen to share with someone who had the power to land me in a great deal of trouble. I watched her face – and it grew redder and redder as she read. After a moment, she looked at me silently for an infinity of seconds, then said, “Never bring this garbage into my class again.”

I think it was about three weeks before the need for distraction, and an outlet for my raging hormones and imagination, led me to disobey her. I don’t know if she knew; if she did, she chose to ignore it, which was maybe better for both of us. As a forty-five year old woman, I’ve thought about my Quadratic Eroticism, and I wish that I could apologize for embarrassing her in front of the class. “I was bored, and I hate the subject matter,” may have been true, but there are places to write erotica, and places not to write it – and a public high school math class falls into the latter….

But, on the other hand….

It was those early, very bad stories that fueled me, that trained me to write regularly, and prolifically. I still explore some of the same characters, and they still find themselves in erotic situations. Not all the time, anymore, and in a more accurate and believable way (I’ve leaned I few things, after all, in the better part of three decades). So, even if I never can solve those durned quadratics, I didn’t waste my time, either –

Which goes to prove that what kids learn is not always remotely related to what the teacher teaches.

How about you? Did you have any subversive hobbies or passions when you were in high school? Can you solve a quadratic equation? Or do you relate more to the video below?

Jot on over and read more mathin’ posts!