This is one of those cartoons that gets me in trouble with some readers. It certainly isn’t a joke that anyone is going to get right away. I was all right with “arithmetic” when I was a boy, even with “long division” and the dreaded “fractions.” Made perfect sense to me. However, beginning in junior high, when the subject became “mathematics,” I began to falter. I can’t tell you why. It just didn’t make sense. How could c equal 12? Is it possible to be too literal for mathematics? My one bright area, at least in its basic form, was geometry. I got to draw! That made sense.