The school bell finally rang, to me that was music to my ears. Getting out of math class was a blessing I had been waiting for. 

“Remember students, your assignment is due on Monday. Don't forget to finish it up, it's worth quite a bit of your marks” Mr. Willam announced. 

I didn't care, his math assignment was the one thing I was trying to avoid. Besides, I had a better way to spend my Friday evening. So, I exited the building, ran over towards my bike and began peddling. Wind rushed against my face as I rode through the neighborhood. It was a thrill, a thrill I wished would last longer. 

BOOM! 

My bag flew out my shoulder, my bike came crashing down, and all my assignment papers scattered across the ground. My tire got caught against a pole, and now I had to look at my annoying papers again. The one thing I was trying to avoid.

“I believe this is yours” I heard an old man say as he picked my papers. 

“Forget about them, I don't even want to see those pages” I replied. 

He looked at me with confused eyes before reading through the rubric. 

“Oh, an assignment about negative numbers? Seems fun” he cheered. 

I lost it hearing those words, all the anger I had through my lessons boiled out of me. 

“Fun? Fun? It's negative numbers! I don't even understand them, and now I have to do a research project on them. Why? They're so useless anyways, I hate them!” I shouted. 

The old man laughed in response to my useful speech on the uselessness of negative numbers. 

“You're not the only one who thinks like that, when negative numbers were introduced many people felt the same way as you. Countries like India actually rejected this concept at first. It took a while for people to get used to it” he explained. 

I was barely listening to him, although my ears were slightly wider compared to when my math teacher would talk. 

“Well, negative numbers are useless! No one cares about them, why do we even have to learn them?” I whined. 

The old man looked pleased hearing me say those words. 

“Well, back in the day, negative numbers were used for pretty neat things you know. They were introduced in ancient China, in around 200 B.C.E, they were used by the ancient Chinese for pretty cool things” he told me. 

“Ya, like what?” I argued. 

He laughed again, “well people in China used rods to make calculations. Red rods represented positive and black represented negatives. They used this a lot for business as well, red rods were a good way to see what they bought while black rods would show them what they sold” the old man said.

I was honestly blown away by what was happening, was I actually paying attention?  

“Not to mention all the symbols, many were created to differentiate positive and negative. However, the ones we use today were made by the Europeans. Speaking of today, schools have taken it upon themselves to educate students like you on this concept. They teach you the rules, you know like negative plus negative is negative, negative times negative is positive, and so on. An example could maybe be -8 plus -7 is -15. This is because you have to remember how adding works when dealing with negatives. It goes back to the idea of how people used black rods to see what they sold, the more they sold, the fewer products they had. It's the same concept. You understand it now?”. 

Well, at this point I was definitely fascinated. My perspective was really changing, but I wasn't ready to say that. My pride was still getting in the way of me admitting I was hooked.

 “Well, that's all useless. No one cares about that, how negative numbers were used all those years ago has nothing to do with why we have to learn them now. They're useless, it's not like we even come across them nowadays!” I exclaimed. 

“Well, what's the weather today?” the man asked.

I shrugged, “I don’t know”. 

“Check your phone,” he said. 

I reluctantly agreed and read it aloud.

“-12 degrees,” I said. 

This caused the old man to chuckle, “well well, negative huh. Must be cold” he said. 

I looked back at my phone in shock, how did I not realize that?

“That's only one thing,” I shouted. All of a sudden, I got a call on my phone. I looked at the screen and unfortunately, my friend was calling me.

 “Who is that?” the old man asked.

“Oh, it's just a friend asking me for the five dollars I owe. Problem is I got no money so I can't pay him right now” I responded. 

“So, your balance is negative five dollars huh,” he said. 

I glanced at him, then back at my phone. He was right, I did have negative five dollars. Were negative numbers really useful? I thought I would never even come across them, yet I had been dealing with them my whole life! 

“See, negative numbers aren't that bad right?” the old man said, smiling. 

I nodded in agreement, “fine, you win this time”. 

The old man grinned and handed me my papers. Without hesitation, I grabbed them and put them back in my bag. Maybe I would finish my assignment.