Subtraction

I have a little friend whose favorite subject in school is subtraction. She is seven years old. As I was dying of boredom today, trying to model proper napping behavior to Baby, I started thinking about subtraction. When I compare subtraction to addition, division, and multiplication, I think it's my favorite.

Now, for the family of talkative math enthusiasts who read this blog, I respectfully request that you (temporarily) mentally block everything you feverishly studied from 4th grade on. Try to remember how you felt about "math" back in elementary school when your teacher would give you mimeographed worksheets of arithmatic for homework. There were no negative numbers, no imaginary numbers, not even any fractions or decimals. Just sturdy round numerals lined up in neat little stacks.

Addition was easy. Stack five blocks on six blocks and you get eleven blocks. Add three more and you get fourteen blocks. Subtraction was a little more interesting. Instead of stacking blocks, you were knocking them off, sending them to block heaven. It took a little more thinking than plain old addition. Let's face it: It still takes a little more thinking. All that borrowing from the tens column to subtract from the ones column. That's tricky stuff. But it's usually not too tricky to do in your head.

Multiplication was pretty cool for a while, but after you memorized your times tables, well, then it was just spitting out the memorized answer. And if it was something you didn't memorize, like double or triple digit multiplication, it was just plain hard to do. It wasn't something that you'd want to do in your head unless you were my dad, who could do anything in his head.

And division was a pain from the very beginning. You were supposed to use backwards multiplication for short division, which made you go cross-eyed. And for long division, you were supposed to employ a senseless torturous process that involved arrows and "remainders." Blech.

Yes, subtraction. Still my favorite.