dreaming in math

So in between blasts of thunder and the smatting of raindrops onto the aluminum clad windowsills I dreamt fitfully of explaining to someone, perhaps a 12 yr old, perhaps Thomas, how the cartesian grid works, with negative numbers to the left and bottom, positive ones to the right and left. I say Thomas because whoever it was had been introduced to similar concepts in elementary school, only was using different vocabulary, and I was trying to explain the difference to him in terms of an asteroid making its way toward earth from one direction and a rocket blasting off to the moon in another direction. Was still thinking of this as making tea: the concept of a countdown 10..9..8....

hitting zero and the continuing on as 1 2 3 4.. the first set being negative numbers, the following being positive.