I once wrote a paper for English class about my calculator. I don’t remember what the assignment was, but I always hated the tension between Math and English, and this was my 16 year old self’s way of fighting back. I found it on my hard drive and got a kick out of reading it. Enjoy!!!! [and yes, the title is authentic. ooof.]
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 Years of Friendship and Learning
I remember the exact date I met you. I was eagerly pacing through “Staples” trying to find you; you were merely an item on my list. I remember that my excitement to be finally entering high school was building up, my anticipation of the following week reaching its apogee. Everything had to be perfect, and you were an essential element to my organized L.L. Bean backpack. When I saw you I was in awe; with your sleek, black body adorned with a beautiful array of white, black, yellow, green, and blue buttons and a gaping void where your face would be; you won my heart, yet commanded my respect at the same time. When the clerk removed you from your protective glass home, I knew we would have an interesting and long relationship for years to come.
In the days before school began, I stared at you and your ominous manual for hours on end. Was I supposed to understand you? Know your internal logic? Understand your seemingly infinite repertoire of calculations? With each tentative push of a button, I discovered something new, something I only heard of in mathematical fairy tales and never dreamed to be possible. You, my TI-83 Plus calculator, were so much more exciting, yet a google times more complicated, than the rudimentary TI-30 that I threw carelessly into my junk bin.
Freshman year, you provided endless hours of salvation, companionship, and entertainment. Who would have guessed that contained in your sleek frame, you possessed so many stimulating activities! You brought back memories of my old Etch-a-Sketch days in kindergarten, the endless hours I spent toiling away, trying to get every pixel precisely perfect. How elated I was the first time I was able to draw a perfectly circular sun in the sky…my own hands armed with a pencil couldn’t even do that! Your lines were so crisp, so decisive! Strange buttons labeled sin, cos, and tan seemed to serve no other purpose than to create a squiggly line that would donate a splash of vibrancy to my drawings. I became a master of the arts, with you as my enabler. A well as being my canvas, you were also my game board. You taught me strategic games like chess and solitaire. You stretched my mind, make me ponder how to arrange blocks in such a way that a little man could climb them to reach a goal. You empowered me to save lives of chickens and frogs, and simultaneously rid your face of evil creatures. Games such as Dodge Ball and Uncle Worm were more than just games; they were addictions. When I wasn’t filling in your pixels to create a picture, I was sitting trying to better my score in one of these infatuating games. Yes, at times, you did tear me from my studies in geometry, but I needed you for this distraction! You were always there for me when I needed this salvation, a fact that really cemented our friendship.
In tenth grade, you were my brain, and I began to really appreciate you the way the Staples sales man said I would. I hadn’t really needed you for calculations and to actually do your job before then; I hadn’t wanted to bore you or make you do extra, tedious work that I could easily do with my own brain. No, in that early stage of our relationship you were a companion, an entertainer. At this time, I hated any type of busywork and liked to simplify things. I used you incessantly to perform even simple calculations, just so that my brain could remain in passive mode. You never seemed to care; you continuously spewed out the correct answers to my problems, never making frivolous mistakes with order of operations or with plugging in the proper numbers. You would solve equations for me by quickly graphing them and then allowing me to find their point(s) of intersection with a mere push of a button. It wasn’t that my brain didn’t work properly or that I needed you to get through the class, but your brain was less tiring to use and it seemed to make problems easier.
When I entered junior year, I immediately realized how wrong I was to take your capabilities for granted in past years. For that, I’d like to apologize. I realized the first day of pre-calculus that I really would need you and that I had to truly learn about you. My teacher had warned our class that a calculator is only as good as what is put into it; it lacks the ability to think. He said something early on that bothered me: 0/0 was 7. He then said 0/0 was 13. I refused to believe these odd facts because you told me, “NO! 0/0 is undefined; you CANNOT DIVIDE BY 0!” You not only said my thoughts exactly, but moreover, 0/0 = 0/0 but 7 ≠ 13. It was so weird! But when these statements were further explained to me, I shifted alliances; you were no longer right; you didn’t realize that the number you were dividing by 0 was 0. Although that concept is still slightly incredulous to me and certainly to you, at that point, I realized and accepted your flaws; you cannot comprehend all mathematical concepts either. You gave me insight into myself; and I was able to accept some of my own flaws in the same way. It didn’t mean that I functioned any worse, I just had to realize that one can’t be correct all the time. From that point on, I used you (I hope you noticed the change!) with more respect. I no longer relied on you for simple addition or multiplication; I saved your facilities for tasks where both my book and my teacher told me I would need you. I began to learn how you thought, steps you took to plot each of the possible 6144 pixels on the graphs that I thought came as second nature to you. Learning about your complicated, ingenious formulas as well as your flawed, deceiving responses made me respect you much more. I also began to learn separation, how one entity can communicate with and, at times rely on, another, but still give necessary space.
We are now together for our last year of high school. Already this year though, our relationship has changed again. You confuse me more as you age; you grow more complicated by the minute. How can all of your “shortcuts” be helpful if they are impossible to remember because of the vast number? You boggle my mind! And now, I have been told that in Calculus, it is easier to do most problems without you, that you are not even capable of the tasks that are posed to me. And when I am even allowed to use you, I am told that you will not be able to help me. This separation came as a shock, but the distance strangely doesn’t make me too sad. Yes, I still long for the days when I saw you as an energized companion, or for the days when you thought in my place, and especially for days when I needed you to succeed.
After getting to know you though, despite your complexity and wisdom, you are not really a google times more complicated than my TI-30 was, in fact, you are really the same in many ways. You add, subtract, multiply, and divide, just like she did. But I promise, I would never carelessly throw a friend like you into my junk bin. And as the year proceeds, I’m sure that like every other year, I will discover a new hidden talent or gift that you have to share, and our relationship will continue to evolve.
Jen Bokoff 