Trigonometry Class - Friend or Foe?

Trigonometry, my friends, might just put a potato sack over my head and give my butt a good beating.

Seriously, I think I am going from an almost perfect semester to one full of sorrowful woes of late nights beating my head senseless with my Calculator. I could forever be tattooed with the Texas Instruments logo on my forehead by July.

Right now, I am staring at the book that could possess the key to whether I will continue tormenting myself with a second round of school or whether I run back out into the real world and get another job. Today, I repeat, today, could very well be the end of my almost perfect grade streak. "Trigonometry," the eighth edition by Lial, Hornsby and Schneider, sits grinning at me maniacally from the desk. "Open me," it angrily screams. "Let me devour your brain," it spews and venomous fangs drip with my demise.

Nightmares have been creeping into my restless sleep since the day I registered for this class (not to mention my pockets are dreadfully empty after paying the 592.00 that it cost), and omens of what "may come" lay under my eyes in puffy dark circles.

On the way home from receiving the $80 wound that purchasing my textbook caused, my cousin rubbed alcohol deep into the tender flesh. She said, "Yeah, better you getting killed than me this summer," when I mentioned Trigonometry to her on my cell phone. Any minute, I expect railroad stakes to fly out of the seemingly innocent book and nail me to the wall in an angry crucifixion. If I put my ear close enough, I can hear it plotting against me.

As I sit here pondering about the telepathic powers encrusted in the pages between its hardbound covers, a feared realization grows and pulses inside me. "Monday, I have to open this book whether I like it or not...then the true test of time will occur...Will Mr. Trigonometry and I be friends? Or will he be the end to me?"

Only time will tell...