Think of it like this: imagine a frog on some lily pads and if it hops left it gets smaller(negative) and if it hops right it gets bigger(positive) ,(but think of it like numbers) so -14-5 think about the -14 being way down at the left and then you add on the (-5) since the number you are adding is negative it is getting smaller (going farther away from the zero, not closer) so when you add a negative to a negative number you get smaller instead of bigger. Hope that helps