Cheating At Math

For better or worse, I’ve inherited from my Mother a tendency to try to control, assess and regulate a lot of the decisions and choices I make through the use of lists and mathematical analysis. My Mom used to keep a running list of the school clothes my three siblings and I wore each day along with the current number of days we had worn each item since it was new. On the list would be entries like: “blue button down shirt - 27 ½” (I must have been sick a half day somewhere along the line) or “tan skirt 19”.

I never paid much attention to what happened when a certain article of clothing exceeded a certain point in the number of days it had been worn. Maybe a buzzer went off and it suddenly went up in a puff of smoke or maybe it became a gun cleaning rag for my Dad. Like I say, I don’t know. I was too busy peddling newspapers around the neighborhood so I could take off and go fishing down the creek to pay much attention. It was just a way that my Mom kept track of things in her world. Maybe a little obsessive/compulsive, but no big deal.

After I left college and went my own way in the world, I found that I too felt a compulsion to make lists, assign mathematical values to various things on the lists and then do computations to help me decide what to do about this or that decision I was facing. And for me, a lot of these decisions had to do with fishing. Because fishing was mostly what I did when I wasn’t eating, working or sleeping.

A goodly number of years ago, I worked as a scheduling supervisor in a manufacturing plant. It was boring work for the most part, but it paid OK and allowed me to buy toys so I could fish. As well as other non-fishing related items I had to grudgingly admit I needed; like toothpaste, bourbon, hearing aid batteries, Wendy-burgers, etc. When the Spring came and with it the opportunity to fish at least one full day almost every weekend, I would sneak off at lunchtime by myself and find a quiet corner and make my list to decide where I was going to go fishing. I would usually list nine or ten rating factors. Things like “proximity” (how far away was it?), “likely fishing pressure” (would there be anybody else there to puncture my sense of solitude?), “fish quantity” (were there a lot of fish there?), “fish quality” (were the fish mostly dinky or would I have an opportunity to get into some bigger ones?), and “novelty” (had I been there lately?). Then, I had a final category I called “general feeling” which represented how the notion of going to a specific stream or destination resonated with me if I were to interview myself and ask me what I thought.

I would list these factors across the top of a sheet of paper and then list the candidate streams down the side of the sheet. Then I would draw crooked lines between each to separate each category and stream from the others. Then I would follow the line for each stream and assign a point value from 1-100 for each factor. Then, at the end of the stream line, I would add up all the points for that choice and enter this number in the final column. Then, it was a simple process of observing which stream had the most points and deciding that was where. Except for when the answer I got wasn’t the one that I really wanted. That was the unmentioned elephant in the living room about the entire process. Usually, I pretty much knew where I wanted to go before I ever headed for the quiet corner. There was just something I enjoyed about the process of crunching the numbers and I wasn’t above cheating to make them come out the way I wanted. Usually, if I did not get the result I wanted, I simply adjusted the “general feeling” scores of a few of the streams to make it come out right. Then, I would look at my work and tell myself that I had made my decision based on sound, empirical, logical analysis and that the results were unimpeachably correct.

I suppose it’s a little odd, but on the other hand, I once knew a guy who always wore a small piece of yellow ribbon on the back of his vest and would not fish without it. He said it made all the difference in how many fish he caught. Clearly, he was disturbed and by comparison, I’m as normal as they come..

Anyway, the good news is that I stopped making these faux analytical lists about the time we pulled stakes and moved out to the Midwest from Pennsylvania. But not all the news is good. I found another mathematical game I could cheat at to take its place.

There are days on the water when, for whatever reason, be it a falling barometer or not having a good casting day (and make no mistake, fly anglers have good and bad casting days, just like the cagey southpaw baseball pitcher’s good curveball comes and goes), lack of a yellow ribbon or whatever, you’re not catching any fish. Although not blessed with a lot of patience, I do have some and I’ll soldier on for a while, even when I’m not doing any good. I’ll change flies, lighten up my tippet, hold my mouth half open or any of a dozen other tricks I’ve learned to increase my chances. But eventually, if my hook-up drought continues, there comes a point where the notion of being somewhere else begins to seduce me. No doubt the fish there are cooperating. At first I fight it, but eventually I give in. It is at this point that my patience flees and I begin the game.

I tell myself that I will only make 100 more casts and if I do not catch a fish, I will leave. And then I begin to cast and count. 14, 31, 64. Oops, there’s a fish. Six inches long. Well, OK. I revise the rules. I allow another 100 casts, but must catch either a minimum of three more six inch fish or any combination of fish whose total length exceeds 18 inches. OK. 21, 49, 92. Bang! 14 inch brown from the undercut along the left bank. I revise the rules again. I allow an additional 75 casts, but must catch 25total inches of trout during the 75 casts. OK. 11, 44, 57 casts. Big fish swirls fly, but does not take. I revise the rules again. 50 more casts in which I must catch 20 total inches of trout. Or I’ll leave. I mean it. OK. 16, 29, 33. Ouch. Left knee (smashed in a fall against a beer keg in college in 1971) gives out. I sag to the bank and sit with my left leg fully extended to dampen the pain. Well, I’ve been pretty patient and followed a methodical but sensible regimen in order to decide how long to stay and when it is time to give up and leave. Good for me. I exhibited admirable discipline. But clearly, it is now time to go. I grab a sturdy piece of driftwood to use for a crutch and head back to the car.

Why do I play these games with myself on the water and why have I always been playing them in one way or the other? I don’t know and I guess, I also don’t care. I enjoy it. And I’ll bet that over the years, I’ve saved at least ten bucks in yellow ribbon and safety pins.

Now, I have to go check the mailbox. If there are four pieces of new mail or less, I’ll sort them on the stairs just inside the door. But if there are more than four, I’ll take them in the office and sort them. Unless there are one or more magazines, in which case… Oh never mind.

In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean famously said: “I am haunted by waters”. Lucky him. He could have had it a lot worse and also been haunted by elastic mathematical reasoning and a bad knee.