Multiplication Fable

We were to memorize if able
the whole multiplication table.
I learned the ones to sixes fine,
yet still have trouble with seven through nine.
So when the cents approach a dime,
I always have an awful time.

It was during chicken pox
(when I, attired in gloves and sox
was simply trying to score an itch)
that my math skills developed a hitch.
As others mastered seven through nine,
I was there at home, supine.

Six times seven’s forty-two.
that’s the last sum I easily do.
Six times eight is forty eight–
determined after some debate.
But six times nine or nine times six
always leaves me in a fix.

Sixty-three, perhaps, or more.
Could it instead be sixty-four?
At nine times eight I’m surely lost.
Those sums I should have had embossed
upon my wrist in a tattoo.
These long delays just will not do.

I breathe a sigh when once again
the multiplier ends up as ten.
Ten is easy, so I strut
as I just add a zero, but
as I stumble through its next-of-kin,
I approximate, then write it in.

The prompt today was memorize.