How I Woke Up

I think it was in junior high school that I came to grips with this very simple secret: there isn't a lot of oneness in the number one. Sure, cursory glance, or an algebraic solution, leads you to a nice, neat answer for x. But inspect the equation with total abandon, and you're left with 0.9999.... I was shocked. Who knew how long one was broken? I suspected it had been that way all along, but no one bothered to let me in on the plot. And after the horror and confusion subsided, I was forced into a more dangerous realization. I had the sinking suspicion that I was being fed a lie. Every day in school, between 1st and 5th bell, I was being conned, hoodwinked and sold a bill of goods. My textbook was soaked in it, approved by school district bureaucrats with simple minds and a penchant for even simpler answers. I would have forgiven the deception were it not for another crushing blow that came the day I learned that Pi was irrational - infinite in it's complexity long after the decimal point. Not 3.14, or 3.14159, but 3.13159265358....3cupcakes...2cats...aredwagon...blah...blah...infinity. The walls shook, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and the universe briefly noticed that I was watching.

The discoveries continued through my undergraduate work in college. At some point, Newton's Universal Gravity Equation started looking strangely similar to Coulomb's Law, despite the fact that gravity and electricity aren't related - not even by marriage. By the way, gravity turns out to be a wuss. Really, it's weak. Remember that flimsy magnet on your refrigerator? Well, the little magnetic wafer is in a tug-o-war with the total gravitational pull of our planet... and it's winning. I couldn't believe it took me so long to notice. But the music completely stopped when I found the ultimate truth about our friend Pi - that he was transcendental. It was in that moment that I saw it. The curtain of reality was hanging open, and things people weren't supposed to see were showing. God was holding the curtain open with a smile, like the kid at the carnival charging a nickle for a peek under the tent at the freak show. And like that, I was awake. Anything was possible.

So here I am years later, still daydreaming about what's possible. But I've since made a promise to myself: my kids would not have to find out the hard way. The day came when I passed the simple problem above to my 10 year old daughter, Jada (the "math wiz"). Her initial reaction was expected: "Dad, it's 1... duh!" I gave her a calculator, had her work through it step by step, and stood back. Boredom eventually gave way to confusion, and confusion was overtaken by awe. She finally looked up at me with the skeptical face of a toddler that saw the puppeteer's arm behind the curtain. And like that, Jada was beginning to wake up, too.