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I stapled the papers together, my arms tensing with each resounding crunch, working fast and deliberately. I didn’t notice, till I was done, Rosie’s silent retreat to the nearest wall hanging her head and willing herself to become part of the flat, yellow backdrop.
“What’s wrong Rosie?” I asked sounding concerned.
She held out her thumb towards me while trying to keep herself as far from me as possible. Right in the middle was a perfect, red dot. It was the merest speck of cherry red that shown like ruby against Rosie’s pale skin. If only for a moment, the distinct excellence of that point was so real that it made Rosie’s distress seem coldly distant.
Sophia and I were doing our bean addition where she would shake six beans out of a cup onto the carpeted floor. The kindergarten floors were fitted with that hard, sandpapery carpeting that you see everyone has in their “finished” basement today. This was a technique that the educational system used to prepare the kids for the yellowish-creamy square tiles of the high school that they’d later come to love but still keep them within the comforts of their own home; the cellar. Each bean was half white and half green. When the beans spilled out she would add the greens and the whites and to her delight always come up with a total of six. She was doing wonderfully, that is, until, like a true gambler at heart, she shook out my unfortunate end; six green beans. And to think she did it all on a ≈ 14.2857% chance.
With her small chubby hand she awkwardly but resolutely wrote 0 + 0 = 6.
“Sophia” I said “let’s try that again.”
Ignoring me she started to refill the cup with the scattered beans.
“Sophia” I said “let’s try it again. There’s 0 white beans and 6 green beans.”
“No, no” she mumbled in that dangerously cute voice, “zero…plus zero-equals six because zero and zero…zero equals six.”
“Sophia” I said again pointing, “zero white beans plus six green beans equals six.”
“No, no. There’s zero plus zero cause there aren’t any beans and zero and zero and zero is six cause beans is six.”
I was being outwitted by pure ignorance. And I realized that, to herself, she was just as right in saying that 0 + 0 = 6 as Pythagoras was in saying that a² + b² = c². Sophia had her own logic that I later wondered, many a time, transcended any other.
In her mind nothing was being added to nothing. There were no white beans, obviously, and there was no change from the six green beans so 0 + 0 = 6. Any change from the beginning, other than nothing, would, even in an educated adult’s logic, make the result differ from the beginning. The only way to have no white beans (all green beans) and get six is to add no change to it. As Sophia made it clear, 0 + 6 was the absolute worst thing you could possibly do.
“Sophia” I said “let’s move on to the next one.”