The only math I came (remotely) close to loving was geometry. The teacher was adequate but not inspiring, but the course itself had tangible parts: protractors and compasses. The concept of congruency appealed to me.
While I can't remember now how to compute congruencies and make two triangles match, I can now just trace them. Or print them out.
My math muscles are punier than my upper arm muscles, which are actually quite strong from moving furniture. Except for keeping account of my income and expenditures, though, math isn't really a muscle I miss.
Diagramming sentences, however, is another matter. I couldn't grasp it in seventh grade until Carlene told me it was like a game. She was a way better teacher than my English teacher, and I got to be a hot-shot sentence diagrammer.
From time to time, I used to pull the dusty relic out of my teacher bag and use to to show 18-year-olds why a string of random words might not be a real sentence. ("It has to have a verb," I said. "What's a verb?" someone always asked.)
All those little rockets and dotted lines, all those submarine clauses and phrases--there's beauty in well-made sentences. When I read a really good one, or hear one in a speech, I sometimes mentally diagram it to extend the pleasure.
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