When I was a freshman at the local Catholic high school, my religion teacher, who was a priest, and my math teacher, who was “off-center” (she thought math was fun, for heaven’s sake), would engage in a friendly debate over which discipline was more essential to our daily lives.
My mathematician teacher would argue that it was impossible to function on a daily basis without math, and the priest would smile and say the same was true of God. The math teacher would occasionally say it was all a fun exercise – it being a Catholic school and all – but I think she believed what she said.
Anyway, while putting up some crown moulding over the weekend, I found myself understanding that they were indeed both right. In between praying for guidance and asking forgiveness for the horrible things that came out of my mouth, I did a lot of ciphering.
And not just when it came to measuring. There was plenty of that, of course, but toward the end of the job I had to estimate using the new math my kids learned whether I was going to have enough moulding to finish the job. This was done using the eyeball method, of course. Sometimes we rely on blind faith.
So, standing over the end pieces lying on a table, I would silently offer up a prayer that I wouldn’t have to cobble a bunch of small pieces together to finish the work.