THE SIMPSONS:
SIMP SUMS
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
Disclaimer: The Simpsons are trademarked by FOX. All rights reserved
CHAPTER ONE
Ned petted his dog as it nestled against his lap lovingly. He leaned back on his couch and looked over at the photographs of his two lost loves, Maude and Edna.
He sighed, and continued to bask in the barks of the alert and active pet rustling about, trying to make itself comfortable.
Ned was having trouble casting his mind back. He didn't know which of his two leading ladies to settle on.
Was Edna's passing perhaps too raw a memory?
Was Maude's tragedy too much to bear?
He thought about the timeline, had it been a few months in between all of that?
A year?
He knew he really shouldn't keep adding question marks to every sentence cobbled together in his head.
He was a man who believed in a divine spirit that held all the answers to life after all.
And then the thought occurred to him.
Answers.
And in that instance of thought, he knew what to cast his mind back to.
He made a quick prayer asking for Maude to forgive him for putting second before first, but he elected to settle on Edna.
And her notes.
He abruptly got up, allowing his dog to gently and lazily collapse in a heap on the floor, and walked over to a locked desk in a study wing of his house. He took the key to the desk from its spot chained underneath the sharpened beard of a crystal clear glass statue of Jesus, it even had a name on the label, naming it "Mary".
He took the key and swiftly unlocked the desk.
Inside was a big black notebook with partially torn white labeling, reading 'Answers'
Ned flicked through the pages, and let his love for Edna warm his heart like a blessed sunbeam.
The book contained answers to conundrums pertaining to mathematics, it was these kind of challenges Edna routinely laid out to Rodd and Todd on what she liked to call 'Crap Thursdays' before a 'Good Friday', so as to give them some much needed mental stimulation before a day of play and prayer, but it also contained small poems Edna would conjure up reflecting on her mixed blessings in life. From failed to flourishing relationships.
Ned, however, was on a mission, and he skimmed to the portion of the book he was looking for. The reasoning and inspiration for Edna's most personal of projects
A quote from Maryland University Professor Manil Suri.
Ned read the passage in Edna's voice.
'Think of it this way: you can appreciate art without acquiring the ability to paint, or enjoy a symphony without being able to read music. Math also deserves to be enjoyed for its own sake, without being constantly subjected to the question, "When will I use this?"
Sadly, few avenues exist in our society to expose us to mathematical beauty. In schools, as I've heard several teachers lament, the opportunity to immerse students in interesting mathematical ideas is usually jettisoned to make more time for testing and arithmetic drills. The subject rarely appears in the news media or the cultural arena. Often, when math shows up in a novel or a movie, I am reminded of Chekhov's proverbial gun: make sure the mathematician goes crazy if you put one in. Hanging thickly over everything is the gloom of math anxiety.
-Manil Suri.
Ned focused on the various concerns in the quote.
These were what he aimed to remedy.
He'd spent too long settling while others slipped from his grasp.
Now he would take the initiative.
The command had come before, he had answered then, he would do so now.
Edna's way had proven to be the sum of all things.
It's time everyone else shared in that. And prospered.
He would push for Springfield Elementary to adapt Edna's mathematics programme as their defining one. Across all of their classes. In her memory.
This latest idea wasn't going to be exactly Praiseland, but he had a satisfactory feeling that it would be praised.