That's the Way Mr. Chips Crumbles

This is usually where I write the paragraph that makes it appear as if I’m writing about one topic, before I swerve into the real topic. But first, a confession: my jones is getting the best of me. I made it for a couple weeks drug-free, but I’m back on the ‘roids. Next thing you know I'll be skulking in dark alleys looking to score....

One of my qualifications for writing a blog is the variety of my life experiences. OK, I'll be honest, my primary qualification is that I have an Internet connection, or at least that’s the only commonality I’ve found among the other blogs I’ve read. Even the ability to write a coherent (or interesting) sentence in English, or any other language, is not a prerequisite.

Anyway, I’ve done everything from working backstage at a tiger show to cleaning toilets as a church custodian, not necessarily in increasing order of fascination. But much of my career was spent teaching math.

One of the reasons I quit was because I probably got more affirmation and positive feedback from the tigers than I did from the students (or my colleagues), but there were at least three notable episodes that still give me a slightly warm & fuzzy feeling.

The first was during my abbreviated high school teaching career. I had an honors-level Algebra II class, and for a unit on systems of equations, I asked them to write their own word problem using three equations with three variables. One young lady asked me, “Does it have to come out even?” I suggested that she change her numbers slightly to make it "come out", and she said, “But then it wouldn’t rhyme!” She had written her word problem in verse, a rare instance of my being faced with excess creativity.

The second instance was in a Calculus II course – the highest level I ever attained. There was a local high school student taking the course. There was no single tipoff, but slowly I recognized this kid was sharp… in all likelihood, smarter than me. Not to sound pompous, but in the low-level courses I usually taught, it was unusual to catch that flash of intelligence. He made me raise my game; I knew if I wasn’t absolutely on top of what I was discussing, he’d catch me.

And one pretty minor episode that nonetheless still tickles me: in a math for non-majors course, we were talking about “number tricks” -- like, take a number, add 3, double it…. So I had them pick their own number and follow along as I went through the steps on the overhead, and when I unveiled the last line – “The answer is 5” – there was an audible and almost unanimous gasp. Made me feel like David Copperfield or something.

I was reminded of that earlier this week when a friend sent me a link to a number trick on the Web. Once you've checked it out, you might be interested to know how it works:

• If the digits of a 3-digit number are a, b, and c, the value of the number is 100a+10b+c.
• Scramble the digits, for example ‘bca’, which has the value 100b+10c+a. If you subtract one from the other (assume ‘abc’ is larger, it doesn’t affect the conclusion), you get 99a-90b-9c.
• Since I can rewrite this as 9(11a-10b-c), it’s clear this number is a multiple of 9 (or divisible by 9, if you prefer).
• From number theory, here’s the deal about numbers divisible by 9: the sum of their digits is also divisible by 9. So if you tell me all but one of the digits, I can subtract that sum from the next-larger multiple of 9 to find the missing digit. Note the insistence that you don’t omit a zero; if I leave out a zero, you can’t tell whether the missing one should be a zero or a 9.
  

Example: 286, reshuffle to 628. Difference is 342. Sum of the digits is 9, so if you tell me any 2 digits I can subtract from 9 to find the missing one.

Example 2: 8594, reshuffle to 4859. Difference is 3735. Sum of the digits is 18; if you give me 335, sum is 11, 18-11=7.

So as you can see, your high school algebra teacher was right: algebra is vitally important to … let me think... no, I was right the first time -- it's the Foundation of the Universe.

Just Another Pod Person

Does it seem to you like mankind as a whole is achieving new highs in interpersonal communication? After all, there are innumerable books on the subject. Incidentally, if you’re looking for one, check out Deborah Tannen. Her book, You Just Don’t Understand, is the best one I ever read. Another good one that addresses both verbal and nonverbal communication in marriage is Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages.

Surely we’ve been brought closer together by e-mail, right? You can send your thoughts to someone halfway across the world, instantaneously. In fact, you can even send the same thoughts to dozens of people at the same time, and nothing says “personal relationship” quite like that. I find I hear from a slew of people every week… there’s a lovely fellow in Nigeria who’s made me a very generous offer if I can just help him with a little bank transfer problem he’s been having. And I do like to make new friends, but I continue to get mail from a large number of people that seem a little too interested in certain very personal aspects of my life and… well… person.

Still, I can’t quite shake the notion that there’s a whole lotta communicatin’ going on. I base that largely on the fact that virtually every one I know or see along my daily rounds has a cell phone. Actually, I left out part of that sentence: it should read, “has a cell phone surgically attached to his or her head”. Perhaps I’m not the best judge, since I have been known to put off making the most mundane phone call for multiple days. But do we really have this much to talk about?

When I leave the house, I almost never say to myself, “I wish I could make a phone call. I really need to talk to someone. I can’t wait to get to a phone!” But there certainly seem to be a number of urgent, can’t-wait conversations going on wherever you go. Note I didn’t say “top secret”; another wonderful virtue of cell phones is that they allow not only the two official parties to the call, but everyone else within a 20-foot radius, to stay in constant contact. It’s like being invited into someone’s living room, or perhaps their phone booth.

Not long ago I was driving past a downtown parking lot and saw not one but three young women in the pose we’ve become accustomed to seeing: standing about 15 feet apart, facing away from each other, motionless and slightly hunched. Not a scene from experimental theater, as it turned out.

Up until very recently, my indignation has been pure and unsullied. The problem is that we are in our second year of owning a camp, and while we spend as much time there as possible, it’s not enough to justify the expense of a phone. We’ve been depending for some time on the forbearance of our neighbor, but it seemed like a good idea to find a way to shift for ourselves; the barbed wire she put up along the property line is a bit unsightly.

So we bought the cheapest, simplest, most feature-free phone and coverage available, and the intent is to use it sparingly and for the most part to receive calls at camp. I hope we don’t turn out like the high school kids who plead for a cell “just so I can call home” (and end up talking all day to their friends sitting across the room), but I do have a vaguely uneasy feeling that we’ve joined Cell Phone Zombie Nation. So if you find me hunched over in a parking lot, you have my permission to drive a wooden stake through the heart of my phone.

Postscript I discovered through a bit of googling that I'm mixing up vampires and zombies:

• Vampire <=> stake through heart
• Zombie <=> destroy brain

So I guess I meant "destroy the brain of my cell phone" -- if it hasn't already done the same to me through a combination of deadly radiation and the general dumbification that seems to victimize many cell-users...

Paging T. S. Eliot

I was going to title this "The Cruelest Month", since that is in fact (a) what I had on my mind and (b) just pretentious and semi-literary enough to be one of my titles. I do work very hard on my titles; I like them to be a little bit mysterious but connected somehow so that when you read the piece, you eventually have that sort of "now I get it" feeling.

Ties in with one of my more annoying traits -- I have almost a compulsion to be surprising. Taken to its extreme, we get the almost weekly occurrence of some family member asking me what's for dinner, and me saying something vague and cutesy... because unquestionably, nothing enhances fish sticks quite like a dramatic, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition-style "reveal".

I see I have failed in that endeavor yet again, because quite unsurprisingly, I find myself in the third paragraph without having come within a $5 cab ride of my actual topic. However, before I sink to my hands and knees to try to gather up the skein of thought that lies unraveled around me, allow me to point out: I managed to work the pretentious and semi-literary idea into my title, but at least avoided the most obvious cliche. And in my defense, it turns out that any written material dealing with the subject of April is required under federal law to refer to T.S. Eliot in some manner.

I am actually in most respects a fan of April; as pointed out previously, anything associated with both baseball and the coming of spring can't be all bad. I can't help but wonder, on the other hand, who the genius was who decided it was a good idea to try to fit the beginning of baseball, the tax deadline, and Holy Week all within a few days. The pressure of balancing all those demands simultaneously is enough to induce a blogger to try to create an entire entry out of one barely coherent observation.

Theoretically.

My team (both teams -- the one I follow in the real world, as well as the one I created in the fake one) is doing well enough, thanks for asking. I have found as time passes that it's almost impossible to get another actual baseball fan interested in your fantasy team, let alone a random reader... so probably more than enough said there. I will note only that my guys keep getting hurt, but I can't dump them, because after all they're my guys.

Holy Week is extra services, extra music, extra rehearsals, extra demands on the pastoral spouse. This was all well & good prior to October 14, 1999... but gets a bit tricky when you start to factor in baths, snacks, bedtime, etc.

And taxes... I come from a long family tradition of licking the envelope while the postmaster is trying to padlock the front door of the post office. This is not entirely due to malingering; anyone who has ever done a clergy tax form would probably make an appointment for elective root canal just to get out of it. It's a little better with TurboTax to hold my hand, but still ranks considerably below sweeping and cleaning the garage and vacuuming the cars.

Wait, that's tomorrow.

The only saving grace there is that I haven't yet this month run into one of those misguided individuals who thinks ministers' salaries are tax-free. This has saved my blood pressure from the effects of expounding on a little thing called "self-employment tax". But there again, either you're on the team, and you know the drill -- or you're not, and you don't care.

Monday marks the end of two of those three competing events, and the beginning of our vacation. As a card-carrying pessimist (all of our "Locals" have negative numbers, naturally) I'm sure something else I haven't even foreseen will arrive on our doorstep before too much longer.

As it turns out, I guess I should've called this entry "The Waste Land".......

Acme Moving Company

It's a little unsettling for me to realize that every experience of my childhood was harmful to me in some way. After all, I would often play out in the sun all day without a biohazard suit; I really believed that chips were one of the four basic food groups (not your fault, mom, I promise); and perhaps worst of all I watched not only the Three Stooges but what used to be known as "Saturday morning cartoons". As everyone knows, the violence in the classic Warner Bros. cartoons poisons growing brains, which explains why I turned out to be the rage-filled menace to society that I am today.

I think all right-thinking Americans recognize that the king of the traditional cartoon universe is Bugs Bunny. Really, except for the vegetarian diet, I'd like to be Bugs Bunny. Always in control, always smooth, always the perfect comeback. (By the way, can someone explain to me what the deal is with Mickey Mouse? He's clearly the head honcho in the Disney world, but I just don't get the appeal; I can't even understand what he says.

Also, he's a mouse... and he has a dog.)

These days, however, I'm feeling more like Wile E. Coyote. It's not (I hope) because he has the biggest ego of all of them -- sure, Daffy's arrogant, but even he never claimed to be a Super Genius. It's not because he's always hatching schemes that never come to fruition... and I'm proud to say that my nose is smaller.

The classic Wile E. moment in probably every episode is when something goes wrong. He stands quietly pondering, and a little voice in his head prompts him to look up. A boulder, or even the side of the cliff, is bearing down on him.... It's too late to run, nowhere to hide; all he can do is put up a tiny parasol in a vain attempt to cushion the blow.

In my case, I was kinda minding my own business, not even chasing any Road Runners, when I looked up and suddenly found out that in all likelihood, we will be moving next spring. Kind of an occupational hazard for a minister's family, of course. But the size of the rock is exacerbated by the fact that this area is our home in a lot of ways. And the fact that I am not a Change Enthusiast.

But you know, it's not just an approaching rock; it's a test of whether I'm willing to live the faith I talk (and write) about. Can I put my own fears aside, and can I trust that God is truly going to provide? Can I claim for myself the promise that all things work together for good?

The parasol's not going to cut it this time -- all I can do is find a bigger Rock to hide behind.

Not For Nothing Do They Say Hope "Springs"

There are many signposts on the way to spring; I'm sure yours are different from mine. Groundhog Day is the first excuse to speculate on its arrival, and although the First Day of Spring is rarely what it's cracked up to be here in the Great Northeast, it's at least another source of hope.

I said something to my son a few days ago about what we would do when spring gets here, and he was offended. Don't tell him it's not spring yet -- his kindergarten teacher said it was. Besides, the drive-in opened this week, and it's time to go get some ice cream!

For many of us, it's when we start to see and hear the birds. As I wrote this, two ducks just flew by about eye-level. That has to be a good sign, right? ... on the other hand, I couldn't tell whether they were headed north or south...

If, unlike my son, you need your spring to feel a bit more springy, you may wait for meteorological spring. Around here, we get subtle and fleeting hints: the first day you can walk to the mailbox without a jacket (or shoes!); that rich, green, south-windy scent in the breeze; the subsequent sneezing fits.

Whoa, there go some geese. Really hoping that's north.

What really inspires this ode is not the warmer weather we've had this week (outdoor blogging!), or the fact that I've moved down two jacket-thicknesses in that time, because the Real First Day of Spring falls on April 2 this year: Opening Day. You can have your vernal equinox, my friends, and it will not be the groundhog but rather the ground ball that determines the arrival of spring for me.

The harbingers:

• Yahoo! opens their free fantasy baseball leagues for sign-up
• The players begin reporting for spring training (note: A Baltimore Oriole looks a little bit like a robin anyway, or at least the logo does)
• Season Preview publications begin to appear on the newsstands
• "In Port St. Lucie, Fla., today, a Mets split-squad defeated the Expos 7-3." Home runs were hit by several 20-year-old kids you've probably never heard of, and very possibly never will again
• The Transactions column in the sports pages really is a column, full of who was "optioned to Rochester" and "reassigned to minor-league camp" -- or perhaps just plain old released
• I conduct the draft for my fantasy league, assign players to teams & hit the switch

With each of those the anticipation builds and the icicles begin to thaw. But tomorrow night on ESPN, the honest-to-goodness first pitch is thrown out and baseball is back. Feels like I can take a deep breath again. Even if the game broadcasts for the first month feature guys huddled in the dugout in parkas gripping hot water bottles, even if shoes and jackets will continue to be required to retrieve my Sports Weekly from the mailbox, you can't take spring away from me now.