Imaginary Numbers
by Pallavi Kidambi - September 28, 2007
by Pallavi Kidambi - September 28, 2007
Imaginary Numbers
I scratched my nose and stared blankly at the split ends in my hair. The room was so hot. The sun beamed onto my desk and its reflection twinkled on my watch. I looked down, only 35 minutes of class left! Woo hoo! I found it incredible that there was someone in class that could actually concentrate amidst the humidity and brain estrangement that everyone else was experiencing. I couldn’t focus on the numbers. 2 + 2 = 12? I couldn’t focus anymore. My thoughts were gone. My thoughts were cruising down the 101 of daydreams and there was no traffic to stop me. The only thing I had to worry about was the highway patrol smacking my hands and waking me up from my daydream delight.
My teacher started to talk about rational and irrational numbers and my eyes started to unfocus. I wondered about those imaginary numbers that no one really talks about too much. Imaginary numbers…I wonder what they would be like. Would they be like imaginary friends? Would they be like imaginary fantasies? Or would they be like “the numbers” that are so significantly brought up in LOST? Whatever they, were, they got me dreaming, and when my thoughts go, they’re gone.
One thing led to another and I found myself trying to make up an imaginary friend. I once read that children make up imaginary friends so that they could make an individual that would fit their standards. It would be some one that would accept them for who they were and would “play” with them when they had no other friends. This imaginary friend would be the perfect and ideal friend of any child. So I felt that at that time, I wanted to make an imaginary friend.
The first image that came to mind was of a giant number 5. A number 5 like the numbers on Sesame Street. The man inside of that suit would almost always be a man who would go to the ends of the earth to get paid, so he would degrade himself by dancing in a giant red number 5 suit on television.
His name will be Five and he will chew 5 gum and he would only teach you things about the number 5. He didn’t seem to be the ideal imaginary friend for me, but he was the ideal imaginary number and his qualities would suffice for the duties of the imaginary numbers.
We would go on many adventures together. Our first adventure was trying to find Mr. Five a date to the imaginary numbers reunion. We were trying to pick some one out of numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. Mr. Five finally settled on 8 because he liked her figure. I thought this pretty low of Mr. Five. He shouldn’t be judging his date on their looks! He argues that in the short amount of time he had to choose, look were the only criteria he had that would make the judging process fair.
So Mr. Five went on his date with Miss Eight and when Mr. Five cam back, he said that it was likely that he and Miss Eight would be married. So Mr. Five and Miss eight got married, and soon there came little Thirteen. Thirteen had horrible luck, especially in her teenage years. She got dreadful grades, she had no friends, and everyone that associated with her seemed to vanish. Her only friend was her little black cat. That cat would follow her everywhere making sure that no one would harm Thirteen, but everyone stayed away from thirteen anyways. They didn’t want their bad luck to grow and grow until the point where they would become as miserable as Thirteen was.
Thirteen had many more problems when she was older. The only number she could marry was old Six-hundred-sixty-six (666 for short). She decided not to because every other wife of 666 had mysterious and brutal deaths. His previous wife, 87, was divided 986 times and died in the process. Poor Thirteen died alone at the young age of 27.
Mr. and Mrs. Five were devastated. Their only child died of a broken heart. I told them I would mend it by imagining up a brand new number for them, but they insisted that no one could replace Thirteen, not even Twenty-three. Their sorrow was so great, that it made even I increasingly depressed. Then all of a sudden I came to a screeching halt. I was caught by highway patrol.
“Miss, this is not pre-school. Nap time is over.”
By the time I realized that the numbers were all a dream, class was over. I wondered whether I would ever see Mr. Five again. Would his pain ever cease? But I knew that wherever Mr. Five was, he was grateful that I was with him to ease his sufferings. No one believed Mr. Five when he told them about his friend who would keep him company. They would say that it was impossible for humans to come to life and be friends with us numbers, but Mr. Five needed a friend around in those rough times and no matter who it was, that friend help him. The friend just happened to be an imaginary human.
I scratched my nose and stared blankly at the split ends in my hair. The room was so hot. The sun beamed onto my desk and its reflection twinkled on my watch. I looked down, only 35 minutes of class left! Woo hoo! I found it incredible that there was someone in class that could actually concentrate amidst the humidity and brain estrangement that everyone else was experiencing. I couldn’t focus on the numbers. 2 + 2 = 12? I couldn’t focus anymore. My thoughts were gone. My thoughts were cruising down the 101 of daydreams and there was no traffic to stop me. The only thing I had to worry about was the highway patrol smacking my hands and waking me up from my daydream delight.
My teacher started to talk about rational and irrational numbers and my eyes started to unfocus. I wondered about those imaginary numbers that no one really talks about too much. Imaginary numbers…I wonder what they would be like. Would they be like imaginary friends? Would they be like imaginary fantasies? Or would they be like “the numbers” that are so significantly brought up in LOST? Whatever they, were, they got me dreaming, and when my thoughts go, they’re gone.
One thing led to another and I found myself trying to make up an imaginary friend. I once read that children make up imaginary friends so that they could make an individual that would fit their standards. It would be some one that would accept them for who they were and would “play” with them when they had no other friends. This imaginary friend would be the perfect and ideal friend of any child. So I felt that at that time, I wanted to make an imaginary friend.
The first image that came to mind was of a giant number 5. A number 5 like the numbers on Sesame Street. The man inside of that suit would almost always be a man who would go to the ends of the earth to get paid, so he would degrade himself by dancing in a giant red number 5 suit on television.
His name will be Five and he will chew 5 gum and he would only teach you things about the number 5. He didn’t seem to be the ideal imaginary friend for me, but he was the ideal imaginary number and his qualities would suffice for the duties of the imaginary numbers.
We would go on many adventures together. Our first adventure was trying to find Mr. Five a date to the imaginary numbers reunion. We were trying to pick some one out of numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. Mr. Five finally settled on 8 because he liked her figure. I thought this pretty low of Mr. Five. He shouldn’t be judging his date on their looks! He argues that in the short amount of time he had to choose, look were the only criteria he had that would make the judging process fair.
So Mr. Five went on his date with Miss Eight and when Mr. Five cam back, he said that it was likely that he and Miss Eight would be married. So Mr. Five and Miss eight got married, and soon there came little Thirteen. Thirteen had horrible luck, especially in her teenage years. She got dreadful grades, she had no friends, and everyone that associated with her seemed to vanish. Her only friend was her little black cat. That cat would follow her everywhere making sure that no one would harm Thirteen, but everyone stayed away from thirteen anyways. They didn’t want their bad luck to grow and grow until the point where they would become as miserable as Thirteen was.
Thirteen had many more problems when she was older. The only number she could marry was old Six-hundred-sixty-six (666 for short). She decided not to because every other wife of 666 had mysterious and brutal deaths. His previous wife, 87, was divided 986 times and died in the process. Poor Thirteen died alone at the young age of 27.
Mr. and Mrs. Five were devastated. Their only child died of a broken heart. I told them I would mend it by imagining up a brand new number for them, but they insisted that no one could replace Thirteen, not even Twenty-three. Their sorrow was so great, that it made even I increasingly depressed. Then all of a sudden I came to a screeching halt. I was caught by highway patrol.
“Miss, this is not pre-school. Nap time is over.”
By the time I realized that the numbers were all a dream, class was over. I wondered whether I would ever see Mr. Five again. Would his pain ever cease? But I knew that wherever Mr. Five was, he was grateful that I was with him to ease his sufferings. No one believed Mr. Five when he told them about his friend who would keep him company. They would say that it was impossible for humans to come to life and be friends with us numbers, but Mr. Five needed a friend around in those rough times and no matter who it was, that friend help him. The friend just happened to be an imaginary human.
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