029 – Problems: Math and Otherwise

Or, A Tale of Passion and Fruit

“Danny,’ our homeroom teacher told us, “is transferring to our school from a math textbook.” This took the students a few weeks to understand but as he always had an odd amount of change that he was trying to give you a peculiar fraction of, or was constantly in possession of way too much of a certain fruit than could ever be for practical purposes – like 32 watermelons, we found out that, indeed, he was one of those kids we read about in math problems.

If Danny has 32 watermelons and he gives Suzie 20… only we didn’t have to imagine it anymore, it happened before our eyes. And why Suzie was always the recipient of Danny’s obscure bequeathals, did not take a genius to figure out. Suzie was shy and always accepted what she was given. And although the rest of didn’t have any better ideas for how to talk to girls, still, when he’d give Suzie 20 (or 5/8) of his watermelons, we were like, ‘Danny, what the hell?’ And ‘Suzie, what the heck are you gonna do with all those?’

But Suzie was what our teachers called ‘non-verbal autistic,’ so the questions to here were rhetorical. She took the watermelons without a word, crowded them in her cubby, and, when the bell rang, carried as many as she could home with her, which was 1, barely. I’m ashamed to admit we boys of the class did nothing but stare as Suzie’s knees buckled inward under the weight of just 5% of her harvest during her strained waddle home, inundated by her lot like some tropical middle-school Sisyphus. All while Danny sat at his desk parsing out rambutans, settling the grand equations of tomorrow’s bounty on the abacus of his heart.