Zero flummoxed me in math when I was in first and second grades. Fourth and fifth too, since I'm trying to be as precise as zero so obviously is.
It could never become bigger or smaller, because....it was zero. This concept sent me spinning. Zero was, forever more, just zero? Nothing, naught, rien de tout, void, emptiness, black hole and more? Endless? Nada and zilch?
I found the fact that zero could never be multiplied by any number and get any bigger, implausible. This went against every instinct that told me it should be otherwise. Even one times two made two.
But zeros just sat there. Blessed with the exotic name (by definition any word beginning with the letter 'z'), possessed of a pleasingly smooth, non-cantankerous shape, it was not, however, friendly. It was illusive, non-communicative, resistant to change. It was remote, and also strangely entitled. Zeros were opaque, blank, muted into supreme silence--
I didn't like it zeros were unchangeable. Zeros were rude, that's what they were. Zero time four trillion should at least have had the grace to budge from zero to one. But no. Zeros stayed put. Zero times four trillion equaled zero. End of discussion.
Madeline L'Engle died just recently. She wrote "A Wrinkle in Time", among many others, and I love her books. Her creative gift was unparalleled.
Reading the obit in the Los Angeles Times, it mentioned she said she grew up feeling like an oddball, brought on by the usual--shyness, introspection, older parents, and boarding schools. But she felt her most important trait, even as a child, was the fact she was an iconoclast.
And that trait was demonstrated by this incident. When she was in school she argued with her teacher that three times zero could not be zero.
Reading that, my world took one small skip for common sense.
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