Rational numbers

So, El Ultimo Gringo came to town last weekend. That means a lot of things, including the fact that I had to go to the police station ahead of time to prepay our bail (it just saves a step). After a long afternoon, evening, and possibly early morning of drinking we started talking about just how my brain actually works. Or more accurately, how I was able to pull off this trick back when we were at school.

Here’s the story. It was six in the morning. We had been drinking the entire time (and this was following another day where we went to at least four in the morning). Obviously, none of us were in our right mind at this point in time. At some point, the question came up as to how fast could I add up the numbers on a randomly selected group of dominoes. This led to a number of times of guys just throwing dominoes down on a table and my adding them up in about three seconds. Which might not be that impressive but it definitely is when you haven’t slept in like two days. But, the Gringo asked the question, “How in the world do you do that?”

And the answer is I really don’t have any idea. My mind is kind of wired that way. Numbers make sense to me. They work in very predictable ways. One plus one is always two (well, unless you are working in a binary system but only geeks will even get that reference). And once you see the patterns you can make assumptions and everything flows together. I view numbers and problems like a big jigsaw puzzle, I’ve got the picture in my mind and I’m just matching up shapes until all the pieces fall into place. It’s no surprise that I list my career as a number cruncher, I just gravitate to work where all I’m going to do is look at numbers on a screen and make sense of them. That just comes naturally to me.

Of course, the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve discovered that the world is not rational and can’t be broken down into an equation. And trust me, I’ve tried. It’s easiest to explain through a writing habit that I had in college. Every male character I wrote in a story was always drinking based on the fact that a guy who has been drinking doesn’t need a reason to do anything, he just does it. It was a crutch to explain away irrational behavior (though it happens to be true. Just think about any late night at the Backer. Rationality doesn’t exist in those situations). And my female characters? They were all these mysterious figures, operating in their own little world. Because lord knows, I’ve never been able to figure out what is going on in a girl’s mind so why even bother with the pretense while writing.

I’ve gotten better since then, though I bet that there are literary critics out there who would disagree. I’ve started to embrace the absurdity of life, the fact that at the end of the day nothing will make sense. That maybe there is no grand unified theory of everything, that a lot of things happen for no apparent reason. Or at least from my perspective that is the case but if I could see everything from the infinite perspectives that exist it would make sense. Basically, I’ve just taught myself to relax and go with the flow a little more. Understand that life can’t be placed in nice tidy boxes and added and subtracted in consistent quantities. But just take some time out to see the wonder of the world and enjoy the moments that come my way. It’s all part of the journey and I’m slowly beginning to understand that the key is what you see and do along the way and not the inner workings of the car engine.

(By the way, the dominoes trick is actually pretty easy. Learn to look at the dominoes as consisting of one number and no two on one domino. So, it isn’t a two and a five, it’s a seven. Cuts the number of calculations in half. After that it’s just knowing how to add quickly. I’ve never said that I’m smart, Clever, maybe, but not smart.)