In some other life, I may have been confined. I may have been shackled, too. I am claustrophobic, and I cannot stand to have anything tight around my neck or wrists. Who, in a time when confinement and shackles were the norm, would have been the lucky beneficiaries of such righteous punishments? Criminals, certainly. But, also, folks who existed on the fringe of accepted society. People who scared other people with their willingness to experiment and wonder and question.
Mathematics has always made me feel claustrophobic and shackled. Numerical alchemy is bad magic to me. Beyond simple everyday math, I am baffled, mentally constricted, frightened, even. Algebra? You may as well smack me with a sledgehammer!  So it was, that one day when I was nine years old, I was being beaten into mathematical submission by a nun at the school I attended.
I'd had enough, and asked to go to the "lavatory", as the bathrooms were known then. I was granted two minutes to achieve this. I knew it would take me the full two minutes just to reach the bathrooms, which were in the basement of the archaic building. I decided to take my time walking, nevertheless, rather than chance being scolded for running in the halls. As I descended the grand marble steps, I could see a bright blue sky blazing through impossibly tall windows.
It was May, and warm. As I approached the huge ornate double doors where every day I entered this building, something compelled me to walk right through them into that sunlight. The sense of freedom I felt when I heard those doors slam shut behind me was nearly overwhelming. I just kept right on walking at a brisk pace, an escape pace, down the street, around the corner, and I was gone.
I'd never done anything like that before. Up until that day, I'd been fairly compliant. As I walked, I felt weight after weight lift from me, until there was nothing on my mind but the path ahead. Where to turn or not turn. What to look at or not look at. I could have walked a hundred miles that day, each step making me happier than the one before. How far would I go? I didn't care. Just numbers. How long would I wander? Didn't care. More numbers. None of those damn numbers mattered anymore. Not the ones on the clock, the ones on the phone, the ones on the houses, or the one that marked my age.
I was, for one exceptionally wonderful afternoon, totally, completely free. It wouldn't last, of course. It couldn't. But I learned a very valuable lesson that day. I learned what really mattered in life. And, let me tell you...it isn't numbers.