Disclaimer: I own nothing. I don't own a garage full of chalkboards, I don't own endless amounts of chalk, and I don't own Numb3rs.
Summary: Everyone has his or her passion, something that can take them out of the world for hours or even days at a time. Mine is math. A one-shot from Charlie's point of view.
Safety in Numbers
There's nothing quite like this feeling. I suppose others must have something that puts them in this state of mind, though I'm not completely sure on that. The way Don and Dad talk about it, sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one that gets to experience this feeling.
The feeling of the chalk in my fingers. The texture of it rubs my hands. Nothing feels the same way in my hands. I can feel the dust come off the chalk and fall onto my hands and arms. It takes forever to get all the dust off, but it never bothers me when it falls on me. It feels like snow falling on me. I don't even get the same feeling if I have the holder on it. Suddenly, I don't have that same feeling of the chalk completely covering me, bringing me into its own world.
The sound of the chalk on the board. The staccato sound rapping against the board tends to be a constant in my work. Even if I wasn't able to see what I was writing, I think the board would be communicating the message to me, from the different lengths of the scrapings and the short points of the chalk slamming into the board. It is a code, almost like Morse code, that simply flows out if you know it.
You cannot get the same sound, the same feeling, from a white board and the dry erase markers. The smell is different, and is displeasing compared to the chalk. The squeaks from the pens are different and more annoying than the squeaks from the chalk. If you try to pound the pens into the board to get the same staccato sound, the pens are quickly ruined. Even the erasing is different. With the pens, you have to wait for the ink to set before you can erase. Everyone can see your mistake; everyone will be affected by the mistake. Chalk will be gone when you need it to be gone. One swipe, and the mistake is gone.
There is a different feeling I get from the math. The feeling of getting into the math is different than anything I have ever felt before. Everybody has his or her passion, something that can take them out of the world for hours, or even days at a time. Don has his crime fighting, and can spend hours interrogating a suspect without noticing the clock. Mom had her music. She would spend time at the piano, composing her pieces of art in the form of music, without worrying about the time. Dad has been known to spend hours on his contracting work, and that's how he's able to continue doing it past retirement. Mine is math. Being down in the garage, the blackboards surrounding me, can keep me for hours or even days at a time.
This feeling can consume me, and I often want it to. I feel safety in numbers. The worst that can happen is a simple mistake in the calculations, mistakes that can be erased without any problems. If I let the math consume me, nearly nothing would be able to bring me out of the safety the numbers bring me. But I don't. I keep a part of myself out of my math, making sure that I would be able to eventually hear Dad or Don. They know that math is important to me, but they don't realize how important. And a small part of me hopes they never realize just how much it consumes me.
All the people who have asked me in the past why I like math so much inspired this story. Hopefully this will answer some of the questions why either Charlie or I can get so involved in the world of math, and hopefully this will show people that math nerds are humans, and not just weird people that don't connect to the outside world.