I am continually stunned at how bad people are at math that we’ve encountered on the road. Calculators are commonly used by restaurant and internet staff when a bill is presented. While I would gauge my ability to crunch numbers in my head as only average, Jonathan is particularly good, and very fast.

As he goes through the calculations in his head, he likes to say the intermediate figures out loud. And yet people are stunned speechless when he arrives at the correct answer.

At the Cristal Cove hostel, he asks the owner how much it costs for one hour of internet. She quotes him a price of 0.70/min. He answers with “So it’s 42 Rand (South African currency) an hour”.

She looks at him for a brief second, then starts trying to do the math in her head, then runs behind the reception desk to grab a calculator, punches in the numbers, and finds that indeed, 0.70 cents/min X 60 min = 4200 cents = 42 Rand. She is open mouthed in awe as she realizes he’s correct. She then bursts forth with “How did you do that?” several times with real amazement, while looking at me to empathize with her.

I watched this whole interaction first with amusement – I came up with 42 dollars about 1.5 seconds after Jonathan- and then with increasing horror the longer she took to come up with the answer. It really was as if Jonathan were a sorcerer.

I told Jonathan we couldn’t raise our kids in South Africa…:)