Robofootball: Doublespin

“Okay Jess, let’s start easy, parallel lines are the ones that don’t intersect, well at least in our picture.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t quite understand it either since there’s really no way to prove that they don’t meet up somewhere like at infinity for instance. Mr. Pritchett wasn’t sure either, he’s my trig teacher. He thought that the Greeks, especially Euclid, were a bit concerned about a possible infinity paradox involving parallel lines.”

“Oh?” This was a little over Jess’s head.

“Mr. Pritchett just told me to hold that thought for one of my college professors one day. Anyway, let’s just keep it simple and say that the horizontal parallel lines in your picture here don’t intersect. The perpendicular ones come down straight vertically and make right angles, like a typical 4-way intersection. I suppose you can think of the parallel lines as your yard lines on a football field, and when you run north and south, you’re going perpendicular to them.”

“Okay, that makes sense.”

“Right Jess, now in this next picture, you’ve got two parallel horizontal lines again, but this time, the intersecting line is slanted. These angles here and here are called alternate interior angles, and like vertical angles, you have a theorem that says they’re congruent, same with corresponding angles.”

“Why can’t we just call them equal?”

“They do have equal measure but they are still different angles. Look at the floor tile, they’re all the same at 1 foot by 1 foot square within the same pattern; however, each is a different piece.”

“Is that like football?”

“Huh?”

“Well I mean,” said Jess, “Is that if two identical footballs come out of the same factory, are they congruent?”

“Hmm, I’m not sure if it’s applied to 3-dimensional objects, plus one football may have a slight bit of material more than the other at the microscopic level, or perhaps a bump or something, and then maybe the air pressure inside can vary….”

“Oh lord,” said Jess.

“Tell you what, let’s just use congruent for angles, triangles, and other 2-dimensional figures for the time being, okay?”

“Sure,” said Jess. She was after all very smart and helpful in the long run, but a couple of hours of tutoring could sure give him a headache.

A little over an hour later, she surveyed his work with a critical eye on filling in some 20 angle measures in a crowded diagram with several intersecting lines with a triangle in the center. “Only one I see off is angle EFG, remember what the three angles of a triangle add up to?”

“180 degrees like a half circle spin.” Jess was thinking of when he turned left to throw, and then spun totally in the opposite direction to throw right.

“Right, if you project the lines that make up that central triangle like they do here, then the one outside the immediate vertex inside, is supplementary.”

“Oh yeah, it also adds up to 180 degrees.”

“Right, the two you have here only sum up to 170.”

“Okay, that’s easy; the one inside is 72, so the one on the outside should be 108, not 98.”

“Yes, that’s all I could find wrong.”

“Great, can we go to the lake now?”

“Hell yes!”

The old faded pickup somewhere between maroon and burgundy was a 2001 Chevy Silverado, built tough as was the trademark of all American pickups. Even at 16 years of age and 181,000 miles, the big 5.3 liter V8 purred like a kitten after a can of tuna. In a way it had 4 doors as it was an extended cab with a full backseat; however, the rear doors were more half size and only opened from the inside. It had an archaic CD player that only played CD-R’s, not CD-RW’s, and it had no jack for an MP3 player or IPod. It had become Jess’s default vehicle and was closer to 20 years old than 10, but actually was born the same year as Jess and Carly; then again, a 2001 was often assembled in the previous year. It had a few dings, scrapes, dents, but it was difficult to kill a good ol’ American full size pickup.

Jess’s dad, Mike Robinson, was an engineer and once had a company car, a Ford Fusion, but cutbacks had eliminated that perk. His dad did have a Jeep Wrangler a few years old while his mom drove a fairly plane Chevy Malibu. The pickup was the 3rd vehicle out and as everyone knows, quite handy for hauling whatever needed to be hauled, whether it was wood for the fireplace, camping gear, appliances, a bale of hay or two, and on and on. One could have a lot of dependent friends or needy relatives when one owned a pickup, especially an older beater.

“Can you believe that it’s been a month since we’ve been out here?” Carly commented.

“Yeah, I’ve been pretty busy trying to keep up with football and school too.”

“Is football your favorite?” But she pretty much already knew the answer.

“I think so.”

“Did you ever think of concentrating on it, and leaving the others behind?”

“No, not really.”

“Why?”

“I guess the coaches and my team mates depend on me, and well, I guess I like it too.”

“You’re good at all of them aren’t you?”

“I suppose,” he said a little red in the face, trying not to brag. “I mean I try and work hard at it.”

“I see, what about Amanda?”

“Amanda Simpson, the cheerleader?”

“No, Amanda Panda! Of course the cheerleader, she seems to have taken an interest in you.”

“Well, she does talk a lot.”

“To you?”

“Some.”

“What does she say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not the right answer Mr. Robinson.”

“I guess she did ask me out once.”

“You guess? Hmm, just once?”

“Maybe a couple of times.”

“What do you tell her?”

“That I’ve got a girlfriend.”

“That’s a better answer, but it doesn’t seem to stop her does it?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Of course not, not at all.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why shouldn’t I be worried?”

“Because, because, …..,” he failed.

“Because why?”

“Because I think I love you Carly,” there he had said it.

“What?” She said softly, stunned, as that wasn’t what she was quite expecting. He sat uncomfortably silent too, not looking at her directly. She slithered over closer and kissed him on the cheek, then along the corner of his eye, down to the corner of his mouth, connected with his lower lip briefly, and then hooked on to his lips and wouldn’t let go for an eternity it seemed. She slid up to his ear, nibbled it, and whispered, “I love you to Jess,” and they kissed again, and again, and again……..

“I like to believe that my best hits border on felonious assault.”

Jack Tatum