The Story of the Math Cult

 "But they're just pants!"

Sara was frustrated. All of her friends had the new jeans, and they looked cute. For some reason, she thought her mom might understand this time and just see that new pants might make her daughter happy. But no, somehow, it turned into a math lesson.

"You already have pants, dear. These new pants are just trendy. They didn't even exist last year. In a few months, they'll be out of style. Not like math. I can solve a math problem and get the same answer today as someone else got a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now. Even better, the answer is the same for me as for someone in China, India, or Africa. Math is true. Math is eternal."

Sara was sick of math. What was the equation for giggling? or hanging out? or even worse, making your daughter's life miserable? Just once, she would like to stay home on Mathday and watch T.V. (Mathday was the name her parents and other members of their math collective called Sunday. "It only makes sense to set aside one day a weak for the proper observance of the purity of mathematics.")

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"What's this?" said her mom with a look of disgust on her face.

"That's my art project," said Sara. Her parents only agreed to let her take art if she kept to geometric shapes. Geometry always made her mom feel uneasy since there weren't any numbers or mathematical symbols involved, but Sara's dad showed the equations for various geometric shapes and how to calculate perspective, easing Mom's anxiety.

"It's not geometric. It's all curved and irregular," complained her mom with a strong emphasis on 'irregular'.

"It's a strange attractor from Chaos theory, which is a branch of mathematics," said Sara. She had done her homework. A simple internet search for What's the branch of mathematics that is the least like math? Her mom shuddered at the mention of Chaos theory. No one in her math group accepted that Chaos theory was actually math. Where was the certainty or the truth in Chaos?

Sara didn't dare bring home her other art projects. They were purely abstract, emotional expressions of how she felt inside. There was zero math. Oh, wait. Zero is a number in math. It was a math void. Damn it! Void is a math term. It was a nada math. Yes. A piece of nada math art.

---

"What pie do you want me to make for Pi Day?" asked her mom. March 14, or 3.14, was the holy holiday for the Math collective. Sara really wanted to celebrate the other holidays, like Halloween and Christmas, but her parents were purists. Those are just commercialized days for companies to sell more stuff. Sara thought about what her friend at school said about Pi Day. Pi Day was just invented by geeks to sell more math. Sara chuckled.

"Why are you laughing?" asked her mom.

"Oh, nothing. Just thinking about something. You know my favorite pie is apple," said Sara. 

Pi Day celebration at least had yummy pie. Most of the other math collective gatherings were nothing but math - theory, applications of math, and math self-righteousness. The adults gathered together, and from a distance, it seemed that they were talking about something interesting, like a new movie they saw. But when you got close enough to hear them, they were just geeking out on math. The kids all stood around eating their pie and rolling their eyes. Under their breaths, they talked about how boring their parents were and how much they hated math.

"I'm going to be a lawyer," said one boy.

"Do your parents know?"

"Yes. They said that I'd have to pay for college myself. 'Law is so ephemeral,' they said. 'We'll only pay for a true education. One that uses math.'"

Sara wanted to be an artist but never told anyone. Her art teacher said that she was good enough.

To be continued...