Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Um...No.

Math was never my best subject - I spent much of middle school and the two years of high school math struggling to make it through. My Dad (also known as Mr. Math) would help me with my homework. Bless his heart, he was patient and knowledgeable; I was emotional, dramatic, sarcastic, angry, weepy and frustrated - a teenage girl. I could write the heck out of any English assignment, but when it came to math, my brain just couldn't wrap around the formulas and algebraic functions containing polynomial equations with coefficients and variable x and solution y!

I have no idea what any of that means...I typed math words into a search engine and that's what I came up with.

Now I function just fine in the real world.

I can balance a checkbook - though I don't. It's all online and frankly, I trust the credit union more than I trust myself.

I can figure a tip at a restaurant. I round up, do tithing plus half of tithing at lunch, tithing plus tithing at dinner.

I can figure the sale price at Kohl's. The tithing formula works here as well - or I just look at the little sign...it's already done.

And I can double or halve a recipe.

For over two decades, that's all the math I've needed.

Thanks again, Dad. It wasn't you...it's me. I've accepted my lack of math skills and I'm doing fine.

Until last week with Cameron's irresponsibly handled homework packet. There were a few mathy pages.

Most of them, Cameron did just fine. He's a whiz at math. But as the night got later, he was ready to throw in the towel and I was pushing for completion - remember, this was before I knew who to blame for the pile of homework. He came to a page that initially stumped him, and instead of giving him time to figure it out, I went all "Oh give me that...let's just get through it". Have I mentioned that I get a wee bit cranky past 9 pm?

The problem went something like this:

Tom and Tina opened up ten bags of jelly beans and dumped them into a bowl. They separated the beans by color and counted them.

Who thinks Tom and Tina need to get a life?

Cam added up all the amounts and came up with 1990 jelly beans. The rest of the questions were like this:

There are 57 black jelly beans. What percent of the jelly beans are black?

And on and on through the rest of the colors.

I. Was. Dumbfounded.

I looked through the math book - I couldn't find anything that made sense. We had a calculator, but I didn't know what to do with it. Cameron wanted to go to bed - he just didn't care anymore.

I can do percentages - I swear I can - when it's take 30% off a pair of shoes. Why was this different? We punched numbers into the calculator but it wasn't making any sense.

It was past ten, but I did the only thing I could think of. I called my Dad. Yeah, I'm almost 40, useless to my kid, and seriously math impaired. Daaaaaaaaaad!

I tried not to revert back to the emotional, dramatic teenager that he must remember well.

But Dad wasn't available. Mom was, though, and she knew exactly what to do. Seriously, is everyone smarter than me when it comes to math? Was I dropped on the math part of my brain? Have I had a stroke? How is it possible that my brain can't grasp this?

I told Cam the formula and he was all "Oh yeah, I remember". He whipped through the rest of the colors, found the percentages and added them up to equal 100%. Easy breezy.

Except I'm still scratching my head and my Mom wants me to come over for a little math lesson.

I'm sure my Dad would advise against it.

Anyway...do you know this?

If you have 1990 jellybeans and 57 of them are black, what percentage is that?