I just watched this week’s NUMBERS, and was inspired to write.
This episode, Charlie seems to be talking even more math mumbo than normal. Myself, along with the main characters seem to be getting on the brink of irritation. We’ll all gone past the point of caring, and we tune out the mumbo till he finishes talking, and then we expect the remedial version using some real world simple example.
In the end, he turns to his brother and asks if he knew you could never bend a piece of spaghetti into two pieces. It will always break into three or more.
He gives a brief history of the discovery of this phenomenon with a light anecdote fragment, followed by some named principle or theory.
His brother asks; What’s the point”, expecting the example to some how make total sense in context of a case or situation, and Charlie answers; Sometimes there is no point. Sometimes you just bend spaghetti.
From that moment, I wanted to Blog the instant in time. An origin of as personal nature happened.
I know for the rest of my life, that will stay with me. If I am ever in a kitchen and chance happens spaghetti to be within my reach, I may recite it, passing it on to each new generation like I do with the “you can’t fold paper 8 times” story or “elephants are the only animal with 4 knees” tidbit I pull out of the air whenever useless trivia is discussed socially.
TV makes me smile when I see the bits of social learning thrown in. Sometimes its nice when TV gives us something to talk about the next day, but remember forever. Sometimes its a life lesson, but every now and then it’s a single line, or an interesting visual trick about spaghetti.
The kicker for me, was the follow up a scene or two later, thrown in to make me do a second smile, because they matched my thinking perfectly. As I was pondering the Blog entry where this TV show scene made me happy, but I envisioned thousands of people all over the world doing the same thing. I could imagine people jumping off their couch to the Kitchen to try the theory out for themselves. I even imagined that people wouldn’t believe it. I believe in my hart that I can snap spaghetti in two, I just have to bend faster.
Charlie is talking to his brother, scolding him for his attempt to SNAP the spaghetti, not bend it.
I laughed.
Now I may go downstairs to the kitchen, try to bend a few, and tell somebody else about it.
I bet you will too.
