Smarter Than the Average Bear

He may not be smarter, but he’s far cuter. Moon Pie decided to hold Ter’s reading glasses hostage the other day; we were running around getting ready for work—always a bit of a circus—and he pounced on her purse when our backs were turned.

His enthusiasm reminded me of being a kid and believing that work was better than school because you got paid for being there. Every kid plays at being a grown up. Conversely, too few grown ups play at being a kid. Moonie gets to stay home and play all day, but I guess that gets old after a while. I wish I could remember those days. I disliked school for the most part. Almost every report card from grade five to twelve features a teacher’s comment along the lines of “Ruth would do so much better if she would apply herself.” I was obviously rich with potential (aren’t we all?) and highly unmotivated—except in English, of course. I reckon I’d have done better if I’d been healthy and thus less preoccupied, but I could be wrong. I simply did less well in subjects that failed to appeal.

I regret some of that, now. Math will always inspire an Ugh!, but I must harbour a closet engineering gene because physics has become more fascinating as I’ve grown up. I can grasp concepts of space/time/energy etc. that have Ter gaping at me in astonishment, yet the most significant thing I recall from physics class is shooting light through a prism … and I’d likely have forgotten that little item if Pink Floyd had chosen different cover art for Dark Side of the Moon. Still, with naught but that tiny experiment to my credit, I understood the concept of trans-warp beaming as defined in the Star Trek movie from 2009. I couldn’t possibly write out the formula (which doesn't exist, by the way ... yet), but I totally saw how it could work. You aim for a set of coordinates at a point in space X number of parsecs or light years or whatever from where you are now, compensating for the speed at both departure and arrival points. The tricky bit is figuring out where the arrival site will be, given that it too is moving at warp and could change speed/direction en route. Firing a bullet at a moving target at breakneck speed while blindfolded was a good analogy as expressed by Montgomery Scott, but the entire thing made complete sense to me.

Easy.

I think.

Even math, when I get past the ugh, has become a test of skill. I’ve relied on my calculator for so many years that I’ve begun losing my ability to add three digit figures in my head. Panic ensued on that discovery, and now I’m adding my invoices by hand … then confirming with the calculator. After all, I work with taxpayer dollars so accuracy is key. It’s hardly the same as beaming Captain Kirk from the Romulan Narada to the Enterprise during a high speed space chase, but the fundamentals are pretty much the same.

I think.