Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chh. Chhhh. We interrupt this reality to revisit a specific moment from some years prior,
in which Mr. Grayson asks an eighth grade science class: if a frog sits in the center of your
desk and jumps halfway to the edge, how long will it take the frog to jump off. Some kids wave
their hands madly, wanting to know the desk dimensions, as if it's a trick question.
But I know that it's no trick. The frog will never go over.
Mr. Grayson sees me staring obliquely at the self-satisfying answer, and he grants me an
equally sublime smile before turning to the blackboard.
Drawing a square with equal sides, he labels each side as two units in length. He then con-
nects two opposite corners with a diagonal line and turns back to the class with the easy task:
write down the square root of two.
Doreen Gaunch was an anxious, straight-A girl with zits and thick, black glasses who
would one day snatch an exotic beetle making the rounds for show and tell and eat it in one
fell pop and crunch and then burst into tears. But that was later. In the moment she blurted
that the square root of two is an infinite number and cannot be written.
I smiled again on the right side of knowing and assured Mr. Grayson that he had written
the square root of two in its obvious entirety by connecting the two opposite corners of a
square measuring two equal units on all sides.
Mr. Grayson nodded slowly. The rest of the class faded to green with envy, and like a punk
not satisfied with a clear victory, I informed my dumbfounded audience that the frog would
eventually fall asleep and teeter off the desk. An isolated laugh or two rounded my comedic
moment as Mr. Grayson gazed at a plane of opposing logic. He seemed pleased with company
at the summit with whom to enjoy the view. Mr. Pride, a dull, gray man obsessed with pre-
cision, gave me a C in Algebra and counseled that such a failure to give a shit, I mean care,
could only predict the rest of life. Grayson was good for an A and a nod.
What?
Did I think something? I couldn't be sure, though the next frame arrived on fast forward
to a few frames up in full stride—what we called trucking—headed into town in the snow,
tripping way too hard but fairly fending the heebie jeebies with physical movement that felt
like the antidote for mental movement, which was over the top. No, not an antidote but a com-
pensation. That was it, the balance of the thing, in which success was easily measured in a left,
right, left as necessary, which might be forever or the rest of this night or life, whichever came
first.
I blinked to the inside lane as coming up alongside trucked Kenny Visser, his grin undi-
minished, pumping energy into his step with no as-if about it. He summed up the evening,
the spaghetti and wine, the love all around us, the snails and snuggles, the snow and varying
planes of reality in a word: “Man.”
“Yeah.”
