Tag: Christian

Math for Boys – Virgil’s Theory of Relative Trouble

.Reading time 4 minutes.

There’s lotsa things about school I don’t get.  I know I’ll never catch on to grammar.  There are way too many excepts in the “i before e” rule to keep up.  Whoever thought up English oughta be dragged out to a field somewhere and beat with a mackerel.  Ms. Singer will never give me plus marks for my handwriting.  She puts “be neater” in big red letters at the top of everything I hand in.  That makes me mad.  Teachers shouldn’t grade angry.  One time, she must have been grading real angry because she tore the page and her red ink looked like it said, “be nexter”.  So I walked it back up to her desk and asked her what “nexter” was.  She just let out a big sigh, threw up her hands, and stomped out of the classroom.  I don’t know where she went, but she was a lot calmer when she came back.   She stomps out a lot when I ask her stuff.

I might not understand grammar, but I get math.  I don’t know why, numbers just make sense to me.  Math can be useful to a boy, especially one like me who finds himself in trouble all the time.  I’ve come up with what I call my Theory of Relative Trouble and it all has to do with estimation.  Here’s how it goes: A boy’s reaction to trouble is directly proportionate to its estimated potential.  My brother Webster helped me come up with the big words, but the theory is all mine!

Example: You knock down a stack of apples at Gentry’s store, do you:

A)  Apologize and help him clean it up?

B)  Run out of the store and down the street?

C)  Knock over a display of walnuts to cause a diversion?

I can promise that A is not the answer.  Only my pal Henry would help him out and he’s got more manners than any boy I know.  He is what you call an exception, so A is out for the rest of us.  If you chose C, I like your style, but it’s really an overreaction when you go back to my theory of estimation.  You have to consider the trouble.  The correct answer is B, run, and I’ll tell ya why.  First of all, nobody really likes old Gentry, so they won’t go in to help him catch you when you run.  Second, he’s big in the belly and I’ve seen him breath heavy just from sweeping his stoop.  So he can’t chase you and if he does, it won’t be for long.  Third, if by some stroke of back luck, someone like Sheriff Whitaker happened to be outside and grabbed you by the collar, the sum of trouble wouldn’t be great.  You’d just have to clean up the apples (and walnuts if you tried that angle, heh-heh.)

So, the equation goes something like this: R ά pT, or reaction is proportionate to the potential trouble.  In order to use this equation properly, you have to plan your trouble well in advance and we all know that boys don’t plan much of anything – things just happen.  So we always have to have a back-up plan in our pocket.  I like to call my plan tearing out (AKA:  running like your backsides on fire.)  I’ll cover that the next time they let me type on this thing…if they can catch me.

Who is Virgil Creech?

.Reading time 4 minutes.

As the writer of the book, Virgil Creech Takes a Swipe at Redemption, I’m often asked if Virgil is my alter-ego.  A little menace that I either was or wanted to be.  Although I’ve been called immature, irrational, and incorrigible like Virgil, I have to say I was not the inspiration for Virgil.  But I do like to think there is a little Virgil in all of us.

Being the youngest of nine boys, Virgil started off at a disadvantage in relation to manners and gentility.  Whatever he got came with a struggle.  While some toddlers his age were learning to speak, Virgil learned the art of the sucker punch.  He’s never been averse to rolling up his sleeves and balling a fist to get his way.  Even at his tender age, his body is marked with several scars left by run-ins with his brothers.  Because his hard-knock life inside the house carries over to his relationships outside, he has become a bit of a lonely youngster often described as bitter, selfish, and altogether unwanted.

His surname does nothing to aid his social prospects.  Around Portsong, the name Creech brings accusations, suspicions, and low expectations.  They live in the last house on Woodlawn Avenue – a ragged place with cardboard and scraps of tin covering broken windows.  The Creech home has never been nominated by the garden club’s landscaping award, for the front yard consists of a downed tree and its hatchet-marked stump.  Ironically, the home sits directly across the street from the Goose Greek Country Church, which all of the boys painstakingly avoid.

Poor Virgil has a lot of things working against him, but he has some prospects too. While he is stubborn, the flipside of that is that he is a tenacious lad. When he gets an idea in his head, he drives full-bore until he acquires his fancy or quite literally hits a wall. He’s hit his share of walls and has the black eyes to prove it. He rather likes having black eyes, in fact and considers them a badge of honor. He also has proven to be a good friend, although it doesn’t come naturally to him. But as Henry Lee can faithfully attest, Virgil has proven to be a friend who sticks close – sometimes when he’s not wanted.

I heard Colonel Birdwhistle once say; “Like so many of us, Virgil is mostly lost, but yearning to be found.  So long as we want to be found and there is at least one soul searching, we’ll get along fairly well.”

If you can follow his logic, I guess that sums it up.

If you have any other questions you’d like to ask, feel free to leave me a message. You can find much more about Virgil in the new book, Virgil Creech Takes a Swipe at Redemption, and see for yourself who Virgil is.  It’s available on Amazon.com