7x7

I woke up to the tune of no fever, la la la la dee da da da, which is an excellent way to start the day. Okay, in actuality it looked more like 98.6, but as a rule I like songs and words better than numbers and will never stop trying to replace the latter with the former.

But I wouldn't recommend doing that on your math test. It doesn't work. You know what else doesn't work on your math test? Wracking your brain for the answer to the problem 7x7 and, after your teacher who is also your beloved mom notices that you haven't scratched any answers onto the test paper for a good 30 seconds, tells you that your brain is like a computer and stores away all the information that you know; simply go through your files and the answer will appear, you try to do just that. But the safari that runs the math part of your brain quits on you unexpectedly and there is no tech support to whom you can send the error, or maybe there is but it's just your brother and in all fairness that would probably be cheating, so you sit there and wait and wait and hope that in the same way people still knew math before computers in real life since they built bridges and made up geometry and one of them was named Albert Einstein, you still might have a clue as to what 7x7 is even though your brain has so obviously not computerized yet.

But the answer doesn't appear. And the 4 and the 9, linked together like a little rescue team out of the sea of infinity, never does float into the forefront of your mind. So shamefully, you are forced to hand in the math test like this: 7x7=

Even though you know for a fact that 7x7 does not = NOTHING; it does not equal BIG EMPTY SPACE.

And that empty space speaks not only of your need to further study the multiplication table, but also to the fact that if your brain is truly a computer than it is decidedly missing some files. Or at least one file. The file that looks like this: 7x7=49

Forty-nine. Like that football team from California. Forty-nine. Is that so very hard? And though you'll go on to get a degree at a school that gives you the option of either math or science, and of course you choose science, you will never ever forget that 7x7=49.

And since we're on numbers here, I have some more numbers for you. We just recently weighed our large orange striped cat, Taliesin, and discovered that he weighs exactly 100 lbs less than me.

How much do you think he weighs?