This is Pythagoras as imagined by the Honors Students of Destrehan High School (my old high school)I work downtown everyday at an after school weekend program for children; it's a way to keep them entertained and exposed them to different studies- for example: violin, guitar, visual arts, drama, gymnastics, and etiquette. The only requirement for the children to enter the school is that they need to be potty trained. You can not even begin to imagine how exciting it is to teach these children. For, each day is different and new issues arise constantly. Today, I was to teach etiquette something my adorable little second graders absolutely hate; they think I'm just trying to get "the girls to like the boys" and that would be impossible because boys "are weird". Walking into class, I found myself in the middle of a fight my twins were having, these seven year old girls were fighting, I was told by one of their more 'talkative' classmates, was about numbers.
"YOU'RE LYING" V. was screaming at her sister "One plus one is two!"
"Nah-ah" replied M. so loudly that everyone in the room stared. When she heard this she giggled at herself, twirled her hair around her tiny index finger, and said as fast as she could could possibly say, "R. told me that his older brother told him that one plus one equals two because his teacher told him!" This comment was followed by a sticking out of the tongue. When I was halfway in the room and about to call everyone to attention I was interrupted by the girls. "MISS SARA!" V. and M. screamed in unison then one of them said" Mi papa me dijo que te pregunte a ti because he couldn't answer me when I asked que si one plus one es two! Wait no it's my turn to talk. Miss Sara, she won't let me talk!!!" then "sdufweuhyfjkheuiihqaijsjed". As one girl screamed in English, the other in Spanish, and the room began to fill with the sound of laughing and howling children. It was then that I thought of Pythagoras; one of the well known Pre-Socratics.
Pythagoras is no stranger to me. We constantly talked about him in my high school Calculus class. My teacher is obsessed with him and the idea that one isn't a real number: she would always tells us that the world of mathematics would be different if we would listen to Pythagoras. After talking about Pythag, as I like to call him, in class on Friday I started to think about how not only mathematics would be different but how the world would be different if we had accepted Pythag's logic. I can understand how Pythag can believe that there is an immortal unity in numbers; I mean numbers have been around since the creation of time and will continue to be until the end- even if humans didn't always acknowledge them. There is one of me, there is one of you, I have to two feet, there are three trees outside the window, and the list only continues. The idea of the number is immortal and infinite. This is why when Pythag said that all is numbers I automatically though,"Yeah, that makes sense." How could you not? You can't deny that everything around us, everything we say, everything we do, in someway has a number. There are so many words in this passage, each letter has a number assigned to it, and so on and so forth. The only thing I questioned was the idea that the soul was composed of numbers. I thought that the soul couldn't possibly be composed of numbers because you can't see it's quantity, you can't see if it's made up of anything, and you can't even feel to see if it might have a texture that has value. Then, thinking about it I realized that numbers can be the soul because like numbers the soul is just there. It's a creation of human kind. It's abstract. It's infinite. It's immortal. I don't know if I truly grasp the concept completely but I have my whole life to try to figure that out. All I got from the discussion we had over Pythag was what you see written here and a worn out eraser.
Whether I understood Pythag or not I can say with all confidence that the argument was settled when I responded, "I don't believe in numbers. They're like the boogieman that is supposed to live under your bed. So I can't answer whether or not I think one plus one is two or if one plus one is three. All I can tell you is that not that I'm in college I realized that it doesn't matter anymore." This stopped the argument because they didn't know what to say to that except, "When are you going to teach us when to eat right?"
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