Aach...ye speak like a poet, but ye punch like one too...

PUNCH LIKE A POET

Saturday, April 01, 2006
  
Take that, technology!

Many moons ago in the days of my youth, when my bicycle and I would rove the wind-swept highways and byways of west Texas, there were these things called pocket calculators. I know they're still around, but lo these many years ago they represented, along with the original 64-bit Nintendo system in the living room, the most advanced bit of electronical engineering in my possession. Perhaps you remember these? And perhaps you remember in particular a set of three keys (MRC, M-, M+) that appeared on nearly every such calculator of this era. Those three keys absolutely befuddled me. I knew they somehow caused the calculator to remember a number, and I could generally get the calculator to perform this function. That was it, though. I couldn't for the life of me figure how to make the calculator forget, nor could I make the remembered number useful in an equation. Furthermore, as I didn't know exactly what reactivated said number, I calculated in the fear (well, maybe not fear) that at random and unpredictable moments it would leap out from behind the little black 'M' in the corner of the tiny screen and render my multiplications and divisions inaccurate.

(Not that this would have been a bad thing. Middle school boys use calculators for the same reason they use anything else: to tell dirty jokes. I won't disgust you with specifics, but trust me that it can and has been done.)

Until this morning. I brought out the little blue Texas Instruments calculator to calculate current grades in my classes. In the process I bumped the M+ button. When the little M lit up on the side of the screen I chuckled over my confusion of years past. Then my eyes grew wide. The whole system came to me in a flash, in a Magic Eye Poster moment. MRC stands for Memory Recall. I tried it out. It worked. M- takes the number out of memory, but only when the remembered number is displayed. This worked too. I played around for awhile, remembering numbers and then forgetting them, recalling them to use in equations or working the equations without them while they sat safely in memory. The whole time muttering at the calculator, You little bastard. You knew I'd get you someday. Who's pushing the buttons now?

# posted by Daniel at 11:08 AM.