PontifiKate

I Like Math

In grade school when I was in about third grade, my class somehow determined that “that quiet girl over there” would make a good student council representative. (I’m just kidding. I had friends… apparently.) In the very first student council meeting they held elections for the offices of president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. In my 8-year-old panic, I misunderstood and thought that we HAD to put our names in as candidates for one of the offices. I didn’t want to, but my thought process was this: I like math, so I guess I wouldn’t mind being the treasurer. What I would like for someone to explain to me is how this little girl actually got elected to treasurer in a room full of probably 30 kids who were mostly older than her! (I think there were about 600 kids total in my elementary school, so it’s not like we all knew each other.) I still laugh and shake my head about that run of events.

Thankfully, my responsibilities as treasurer were simple. At the beginning of each meeting, I was in charge of reading the amount we had available in our budget, which was something like $132.45. Every meeting, the presiding teacher would prompt me to stand and I would say, “We have $132.45.” I was still very self-conscious about speaking in front of a group, and never in my memory did I do so voluntarily until I was much older. The amount I read off never changed, as we didn’t spend any of the account’s funds during at least the first half of the year, nor did any money come in. (Poor little Prescott School!) As I got more comfortable in my role, I found myself saying one week, “We still have just $132.45.” I knew as soon as I said it that I shouldn’t have. One of my student council peers shouted out an incredulous, “JUST?!” Needless to say, my face turned red as I realized my error, since this really was a lot of money. This did little for the meager confidence I had built up in my fledgling attempts at extemporaneous public speaking.

So why does this anecdote come to mind? Probably because my life now reminds me of my life then. I work daily with account values, although in a more advanced manner now than in third grade. All the time I find myself saying in mock interest that a client has a balance of something like $642,539.44 in their annuity with us… a number that's just a number until I catch myself and mentally say, not unlike Strong Bad, “Whoa, that is not a small number! That is a big number!” I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes I marvel at how much money some people have. And then I tell myself to quit marveling and just do my job.

“I would be the best rich person…”
-Veronica Mars

posted by Kate @ 4:04 PM