The next sci-fi dare: Hitckhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

In my last blog post, I mentioned that this book made me feel like I was back in second grade.
I know.....a somewhat odd and ambiguous thing to say about a book.  But I had to leave you hanging, you know.

I shall now elaborate on what I mean by such a statement. 

In second grade, I lost all hope in math.  My teacher, Mrs. Reallymeanwitch * did a really good job on my mental ability to handle math.  Not sure what she did, but my mother swears that my "math anxiety" originated from her and my second grade year.  And it followed me until.....well, this very moment.  I have always hated math and never really understood it.  I use calculators all the time and to the horror of my mama, I still use my fingers.  Yes, my name is Alex and I still count on my fingers.

I remember being a freshmen in high school and having to take a geometry test every week and knowing each week that the highest grade I would get was a "C", if I was lucky.  I also remember seeing all those Calculus AP geeks students with their fancy pants graphing calculators and feeling relieved that I didn't have to try and figure out how to use one of those monstrosities.  However, I also felt stupid.  Plain ol' stupid.  I felt angry and sad that I just didn't get math. 

And, honestly this book took me right back to those stupid graphing calculators and derivatives ( whatever they are).

I read this whole book and just didn't get it.  Don't get me wrong.  I got the basic concept of what was going on.  Two dudes (one an earthling, the other a space alien) escape the earth blowing up, hitch a ride on one spaceship, get thrown off that ship, get picked up by another ship (Heart of Gold) that has been stolen by the President of the Universe, fly along to a planet that is a legend, land on it, search around that planet, discover that the Earth was really built by some other space aliens who were contracted out to do so by some mice.

Yeah, the mice kinda did the story in.

Parts were indeed humorous....gotta love a perpetually depressed robot named Marvin! Lots of sarcasm and it was obvious that this book did not take itself too seriously, which I did like. And there were times that I saw a ray of light that I might "get it" but then a paragraph such as this came along....

"They plunged through heavy walls of sound, mountains of archaic thought, valleys of mood music, bad shoe sessions and footling bats and suddenly heard a girl's voice. It sounded quite a sensible voice, but it just said 'Two to the power of one hundred thousand to one against and falling,' and that was all. Ford skidded down a beam of light and spun round trying to find a source for the voice, but could see nothing he could seriously believe in."

Someone pass me an aspirin. My head hurts.

I am sure at this moment many people (my brother being one of them)  are screaming at their computer monitors, "What don't you understand?! That is pure poetry!"

All I can say is that those people must own a graphing calculator. 

* named changed to protect her identity...like I am really worried about it, but just in case.