It wasn’t Sister Rose Elaine’s fault. After all, the four letters identifying her profession as a teacher were “S.S.N.D.”, which stood for “School Sisters of Notre Dame.”

She was my second-grade instructor at St. James Catholic Elementary School on the lower West Side of Grand Rapids, a two-story building located adjacent to the church bearing the same saint’s name, framed out front by a massive chestnut tree whose fruit we kids gathered each fall to throw into bonfires and create oversized bracelets and necklaces for our mothers.

I faintly recall Sister Rose Elaine as a bit thin and somewhat taller than average, with a kind smile and even keel, her lips conveying more smiles than frowns, all of which wasn’t standard equipment for nuns of that era.

Still, at least once a week, in her two soft hands, dwelt abject evil in the form of a teaching tool that still makes me weak in the knees — and bladder – to recall their sinister unveiling.

Flash cards.

I could spell near well any word they threw at me, polysyllabic or otherwise. Tests comprised of essay questions? Bring ‘em on. States and capitals? I laugh in your face. In fact, one of my favorite dad jokes is to ask someone whether they pronounce the capital of Kentucky as “LOO-ee-vill” or “LOO-uh-vill.”

It’s Frankfort.

But have me stand at the blackboard and deliver an answer for “16 minus 9” and it was curtains and crickets. The shakes. Sweaty palms. Whispered incantations uttered unto heaven itself, pleading that I be delivered beyond the gates.

Me: “Hi St. Peter. I know I’m probably a few decades early. But I’m in a bind here. 

St. Peter: “Lemme guess. Flash card quiz tomorrow.”

Me: “Believe me, it can be hell down there.”

St. Peter: “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Incidentally, you should really try using an abacus. All the apostles loved ‘em. I mean, how do you think we were able to count all those loaves and fishes?”

“Hmmm, sixteen minus nine,” I’d repeat aloud to the sweet sister, trying to buy time as she shook a hidden hankie out from within a cuff of her habit and gently wiped her narrow nose. But you may as well have asked me to provide Robespierre’s Social Security Number.

In fact – and I am not kidding – I just now used my fingers to figure it out (the answer is seven, for those of you still standing beside me at the blackboard), because I never did commit it to rote memory. Same goes for “11 times 12” and “9 plus 8” and “7 times 9” and a whole lot of other ridiculous arithmetic challenges.

Thank God my handicap doesn’t run in the family, and that our three sons inherited their mother Hollie’s ability to slay numbers like they were so many dominoes. Our oldest can even convert tough fractions to decimals and vice-versa, given the construction job he once had.

Even now, it’s not uncommon for me to wake from a sound sleep, interrupted by a nightmare putting me in the dining room of our home, where I typically performed homework, my father holding up a card and his face frozen in pain to know that his wrist would tire before I’d conjure a correct answer.

“Um, four?

“Six?

“No wait, was it four?”

And he’d sigh and lay the card down and tell me to go make mom another bracelet.

Math continued to haunt me to such a degree that I actually escaped six years of college without having to take a single class where numbers were involved. Not that I’m proud of the net result. After all, it’s no fun being at a cocktail party where someone starts talking about compound interest and I quake to wonder if they’re going to turn to me and ask, “Don’t you think that’s an incredible multiplicand?!”

And long division? The good folks who made No. 2 pencils couldn’t begin to fashion one with an eraser big enough to handle my smudging. A “remainder?” My chances of nailing that were, well, one in nine.

And so, off I went nearly 50 years ago to forge a career that relied instead on 26 letters, with the smug satisfaction that even someone as diabolical as Robespierre couldn’t muck that up by inventing a 27th.

By the way, I realize, of course, that nobody could ever know Robespierre’s SSN.

Those things, after all, are secret.

Whaddaya think I am – dumb or something?!”

A reporter and columnist for more than 10 plus 21 years at The Grand Rapids Press, Tom Rademacher now freelances, and can be reached at: rademachertom@gmail.com