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MY WEEKEND: Story revives laughter lost to dreaded virus – Kenyan Tribune
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MY WEEKEND: Story revives laughter lost to dreaded virus

by kenya-tribune
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By CAROLINE NJUNG’E

For the last three months, it seems that the only thing that we have been talking about is the coronavirus.

Nowadays, no conversation ends without a mention of this virus that has turned our lives upside down. There is no area of our lives that it hasn’t touched.

Thinking about it, we have also been laughing less, if at all, which is understandable given the desperate situation that most Kenyans are in.

That is why I was immensely relieved when someone recently recounted a story that actually made me laugh out loud, something I realised I hadn’t done in quite a while. I was even more relieved when the story did not veer to Covid-19.

The story teller studied Commerce at university and recalls sitting through an entire class that set out to prove that zero has value.

In spite of him listening hard and taking notes and doing his best to follow the winding calculation of a sum that ended up occupying the entire blackboard, he never got to understand in what way zero has value, in spite of the lecturer passionately putting his case across for two continuous hours.

As was expected, they were given a continuous assessment test a few weeks later, asking them to demonstrate that indeed zero had value.

It was a question that they had all dreaded because no one in the class understood the concept.

 But like happens in every class, there is always that ‘resourceful’ person that somehow manages to ‘acquire’ the answers to any exam. Well, my storyteller says that thanks to the class cheat, they all aced that impossible test, whose marks were to be included in that semester’s final marks.

This gentleman is an accountant now, (the storyteller, not the cheat) and has been one for 20 years, but he says that he is yet to discover the value of zero.

His story reminded me of my compulsory music lesson back in primary school which almost made me hate school.

Though I still remember how to draw the G-Clef and the one that looked like a question mark, I have no idea what they stood for and why they were drawn in certain places in those five short straight lines called the staff.

If I recall correctly, the best mark I got in a music continuous assessment test is a measly 3 out of a whopping 30 marks.

I would marvel at how some of my classmates could get all the 30 questions correct because that lesson was akin to Greek as far as I was concerned.

As you can imagine, I cannot sing to save my life, and many years later, I still wonder why the then Ministry of Education had to waste my many precious hours jamming a lesson that would have no bearing in my life down my throat.

But is it all a waste of time, this learning of things we absolutely have no interest in?

Well, while I am yet to discover how that torturous music lesson has enriched my life, the math lessons, which I found an absolute pain in the neck, are an absolute necessity – imagine having to go through life math-illiterate, you would be fleeced left, right and centre.

I also resented having to sew a pyjama I never got to wear, but I must say that those sewing lessons came in handy because that is a skill I still use to date. Mathematicians in the house, prove that zero has value – you will get 30 marks for your trouble.

The writer is Editor, Society & Magazines, Daily Nation; [email protected]

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