by Jim Whitehouse
“Are you working on anything in your shop these days?” says old friend Lyle Pratt.
“Ugh,” I say.
“Ugh?”
“Yes. Ugh. I need to go back to school and take more math,” I say.
“Shop class, you mean?” says Lyle.
“Math. I’ve forgotten more than I remember about algebra, plane and solid geometry and trigonometry. And remember out high school ran out of money one year and cancelled calculus class. My loss,” I sigh.
“I’m afraid forgetting math is true for most of us,” says Lyle, taking a sip of coffee, or what passes for coffee with him. He adds so much sugar and cream it’s more like a milkshake.
“Probably,” I say.
“Why do you need math? What are you building?” he says.
“A pair of rocking chairs for our front porch,” I say. “I’ve got all the pieces rough cut, but now the real work starts.”
“Can’t you just nail them together?” he says.
“Nails? Are you nuts?” I say. “Mortises. Tenons. Waterproof glue. Screws. Dowels. Not nails, for Pete’s sake.”
“Sorry. The only furniture I ever built was in my college dorm room. Two cement blocks and a plank for a bookshelf,” says Lyle.
“I should do that and give up on rocking chairs.”
“You won’t,” he says. “But math?”
“Think about a rocking chair. It’s wider at the top than at the bottom. It’s wider at the sides than the rockers. Angles. It’s alphabet soup made up of sines, cosines, and tangents, all scrambled together.”
“What’s a cosine?” says Lyle.
“Aha! Good question. I have no idea. Where’s Mr. Brinneman when I need him?” I say, referring to our excellent high school math teacher.
“You mean–where’s your brain when you need it,” says Lyle.
“As if you have any better idea of how to compute a compound angle,” I say.
“What’s a compound angle?” he says.
“That’s where you have to set the saw at different angles for miter and bevel,” I say.
“What’s miter and bevel?” he says.
I just groan.
“I think it’s this way and that way at the same time,” I say, holding my hand up flat and wiggling it that way and this.
“Oh,” he says, licking coffee milkshake off his lips. “So, how ‘bout those Lions!”
“Good idea. Change the subject,” I say.
“Now that I think about it, I do have another question,” he says.
“Yes?”
“When your kids were young, how did you help them with their math homework since you are so ignorant of the subject?” he asks.
“I’m not THAT ignorant,” I say huffily. “Plus I was younger then and remembered more math.”
“Hmmm,” he says.
“And furthermore,” I say, “might I ask how YOU helped YOUR kids with their math homework, or any homework for that matter?”
“I sicced my wife on them,” says Lyle. “But I did teach them how to play poker.”
Later, back home, I go down to my workshop and look at the piles of wood that I’ve rough-cut for my chairs. I study the old, beat up rocking chair I’m copying, looking at all the joints of all the parts, each with its own compound angle.
Maybe I should just nail the boards together and call it a day, like Lyle said.
Nah. I’ll figure it out or get my kids to help determine the angles. They must have learned it somehow.
