Numbers Are Slippery.
I thought numbers were quite simple,
Just additions and subtraction;
But life’s numbers are quite different,
And they drive you to distraction.
One plus one makes two, they said;
That was what I learned in school;
But Mum says her and Dad are one,
So that must be a different rule.
Then, the two that’s one created me,
So that made us two or maybe three
But no, Mum said we are still just one
Because we are a family.
My Dad bought Fred, my kitten,
And I thought he would make us four;
But Fred is now called Fredrika,
And seven is our total score.
Oh, I am fed up with numbers,
So, I’ll be like Alice’s queen;
My numbers will be just like her words,
And mean what I say they mean.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Numbers certainly can be interesting and there are so many things we can do with them. I was surprised to learn not all that long ago that, for a long time, there was no use of zero as a number, and that the concept of the zero is believed to have originated with the Maya Indians of Central America before the A.D.300's. The Hindus developed the concept independently several hundred years later and the idea spread from India to Europe during the late 1400's. Maybe it should be called just a digit and not a number.