QED

Rachel and I had a good time, going over a geometry practice for her SAT's. She posted on FB that she feels herself improving. While I myself felt the same horror I first knew when I pulled an old book off the shelf and opened it to realize I could no longer read French!

Now it's geometry. Sadly, 58 years ago it made so much sense. The shapes and formulae were easy to memorize and instantly recalled. 

Today, facing an SAT test I had thought to "coach," I'm wondering What is a function? What is a series (or is it a sequence)? What do funny marks like

"___"

 II II
mean (and how do you make them on a computer)? How do you get a triangle's area? (1/2bh) (duh!). How do you use "n" superscript to find the second of a series in which 61 is the something or other? How do you know that "a" over "pi" is the only answer that can possibly be true?

Later, on the way to the Dairy Queen in the car, my grandson pushed me to some edge with, "How do you find the area of a trapezoid without knowing its height?" 

"There is no way!!!" I cried.

Unlike French, that one studied for years and can be brought back with vocabulary study and a vacation in France, geometry has not proved brush-up-able. It has to be re-learned, almost from scratch. And geometry somehow has gotten more difficult than it used to be! The rectangle plus the sum of the triangles? But you still have to know the height! No way! F(l) = x to the second power means l has to be, or x must be or I and II both could be....? I almost feel cracks in my brain, with geometry trying to push through like a new little weed through a big rock. Ouch.

But I started out saying that Rachel and I had a good time, and we are. The vacation in Pythagoraland will prove adventurous; the whole family's involved. I'll send pictures.