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Arr, maties! Me name be Captain Grogger McSkillingtonbones! This ship be my ship. Me ship and me love each other, and we both love th’sea. YAARRRRRR!!!!
Many an advenchar have she an’ me taken, the ol’ S.S. Tangent an’ me. AHOY!!!!
Shiver me timbers and flibber me jibbers, on a blustery night in the deserted islan’ of Kaliforni, I met a man at a local library. What a rotten wretch, covered in khaki, his shirt said his name be Aberkrombian Feltch…..he was carrying on about me boat!
Quick to offend, and quicker to offense, me feelings were hurt, maimed, and dismembered. No one talks about me boat!!! Not without staring down the edge of me saber. This man must pay the ultimate price!!!!!
“No. No. No. There’s no need for that,” he says to me he says: “Your boat. It just reminds me of Calculus.”
Me eyes narrowed! Me brow furrowed!! I were ready for a kerfuffle!!! “Calculus? CALCULUS???? Where can I find him? Tell me now or pay the ultimate price.” Edging me sword close to his wretchedly, wretched neck I says to him reeeeal quiet an’ menacingly like: “And the ultimate price be steep.”
“Um, sir. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. Please take your deadly sword away from my neck. I’ll tell you ev-“
“TELL ME EVERYTHING!!!! I take no guff from no bland, blubbering, land-lubbering’ buffoon like you!!!! Start talkin’ or start bleedin’. Yer pick!!!”
“Ok….well….um. You see, you see tangents are this thing for Calculus. This concept. Students can have a hard time understanding what tangents are at first. It’s difficult without a visual, you know?”
He be trembling like skippers kippers, he be. (That always makes me giggle.) The babbling baboon continued.
“So, um….Functions are something we deal with a lot in Calculus. The surface of the ocean can be a function, when it’s calm, and there’s no curl in the waves. If you imagine a boat on those waves bobbing up and down gently, the bottom of the boat behaves a lot like a tangent line does. It just touches the surface of the ocean and is basically travelling in the same direction as the curve of the ocean at the point of contact. It faces a parallel direction….like the boat is pointing in the exact same direction as the tangent. And if the boat didn’t weigh anything so that the boat only barely touched the surface of the water, the bottom of the boat would actually BE the tangent. And your boat is NAMED the S.S. Tangent! I just thought that was hilarious, right? Like, that can’t be a coincidence. I just wasn’t expecting to find a captain that knows calculus. Like, Captain Calculus!”
“You didn’t answer my question. WHERE BE CALCULUS!!!!”
“Um, I don’t know how to answer that question.”
“WHERE??????”
“Everywhere, I guess. Calculus is everywh-AAAAAHHHH!!!!”
“Not good enough!!!!” I cut off his hands, I did! He be makin’ no sense. Over his shrill cries, “That’ll learn you to be sayin’ people are everywhere. How can people be everywhere? Captain Calculus be just one Captain. An’ I knew him once, Captain Calculus. I. Knew. Him. Well. That be th’ most important day o’ me life, it be. The day I met…” I gave him a pause for dramatic affectations “….Captain Calculus.”
Through the piercing wails he bleated, “I was just talking about math. About MATH!!! Why would you cut off my hands? I’m just a mathematician.”
“And now yer just dead!!!!!!”
HACK!!! Off came his head in one fell swoop.
……
Finally, some quiet for me to reflect on what I heard.
For just a tick, it occured to me this poor wretch be the first to die in this here Non-Fiction Section.
But what was it that was on my mind?
Something he said…
Some words….
They give me an idea!!!!
“Put down yer books, boys, and load up the Tangent. We have a Captain to catch!!!” Me and me crew of 23 left that local librarium and ran back toward the oceans of Saint Amonika.
I may never know what that khaki fool were sayin’. Probably no one ever will. But advenchar awaits. I must seek my destiny!!!!
Captain Calculus, one day we shall meet. One day…..
