Having grown tired of his students asking why they needed to know math, Mike Glank came up with a plan. For eight months he had responded to their question with “You should know math because it is beautiful.” This would stun them long enough that he could go on to the next thing. But they had begun to demur. They had discovered the fatal flaw in his argument, which was that beauty was subjective, and so it could be argued, by a boy or girl struggling to find the percent of change, that math was in fact not beautiful.

If his plan worked, Mike thought, it could have lasting ramifications. He dreamed of it becoming a story that was passed down to next year’s sixth-graders. He imagined it becoming the stuff of legend: The day we learned once and for all why we should know math.

The truth was he did not mind making the “Math is beautiful” argument every year, despite its holes. The holes were interesting too, because they assumed that if math was beautiful, that would be enough. Maybe along the way they would learn to pay attention to what they found beautiful.

Still, it was May, and what he had learned about May was that a concession could be made.

He told the class that next week they would go down to the park to measure the height of trees using shadows and proportion. They could bring money and afterwards they could buy something from the ice cream truck that was there in the afternoon.

It was a nice day when they went and as they passed the ice cream truck, Mike exchanged a wink with Rico, the driver.

It was a funny life, Mike thought, as he watched the kids partner up and form similar triangles using the trees, themselves, and their respective shadows. He did feel as he watched them that he was right about math being beautiful. Was it math or was it the discovery of math in a child of eleven or twelve? He became very excited about their discoveries. But it wasn’t so much the math itself as much as the appreciation of themselves for understanding the math. He hoped they would learn to always appreciate themselves like that. That was the start of everything.

It always came back to human beings. You could take the most brilliant mathematician in the world and they might be at a loss in a sixth-grade classroom. There was something reassuring about that.

He began to feel a little bad about his plan. What if his message that math is beautiful was sinking in? It certainly was beautiful to figure out the height of the trees at the park. He wondered if he was undercutting himself by presenting them with the beauty and the practicality at the same time.

His first year of teaching, there was a girl in his class named Amalie Smith. She’d overheard him say to another student, “You need to know how to do this for seventh grade,” and she’d said, “Excuse me, Mr. Glank, I don’t mean to be rude, but when you’re in sixth grade, teachers always say, you need to know this for seventh grade. And when we’re in seventh grade, they’re probably going to say, you need to know this for eighth grade. And when we’re in eighth grade, they’re probably going to say, you need to know this for high school. And so on and so on. Isn’t there a better reason to know all this?”

Since then, he’d tried very hard to make the value of learning math rest in the present. It was the most important time to sixth-graders anyway.

Still, he reminded himself, it was May, and a concession could be made.

After they’d all measured three trees and compared the results, Mike let them line up for ice cream.

“Take your clipboards,” Mike said.

When they got to the truck, Rico made the announcement: “Ice cream is 15% off, but my calculator isn’t working. I need you to figure out what the new prices should be.”

There was a moment of confusion and wonder as the world of percents and the world of ice cream collided. The kids all looked at Mike, who was looking intently at a patch of daisies. Having seen a lot of bad lying as a teacher, he knew something about lying well. The key was to casually and unmelodramatically show that you were the one who wanted to get to the bottom of the thing as well.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“We have to figure out what 15% off is!”

He turned his smile of victory into a smile of surprise. “That’s wonderful!”

The kids realized that they could get to the ice cream quicker than they could get to the truth of the matter. They went to work. Mike walked over to them, keeping up his look of wonderful surprise.

The thing the kids didn’t know was that teaching required him to take on a role every day. It was the role of a man who knew the world. It felt good to play the part of a man who didn’t know what was going on.

The park’s playground was a popular spot for nannies to bring little kids in the afternoon. Two young women walked over to the truck holding babies.

“It’s 15% off!” Tomasina Chew said.

“But you have to figure it out yourself!” Emma Clay said.

Both girls were usually shy, but they had to do something with the colliding of worlds. They couldn’t just hold it.

The young women looked at Rico.

“My calculator is broken?” he said.

Mike looked at Rico and in his face he saw a panic that could only mean that his hours in the ice cream truck were more or less defined by a longing for the shorter, brown-haired young woman. His one chance with her depended on ice cream, and now the possibility of forcing her to figure out what 15% off was might make him look like the ugliest and meanest young man in the world.

“Can I see your calculator?” Mike said.

He held it close to him and examined it, then pressed some buttons.

“He’s our math teacher,” Tomasina said to the young women.

9 x 6. Yep, it was still 54.

33 – 11. 22. Just as he thought.

These were the facts of his life. They were true when he was a boy and they were true now that he was a man.

“I think it’s working,” he said.

“Thanks,” Rico said.

“But I think these young mathematicians should finish their calculations, in case something should happen to it again.”

Mike braced himself for a groan that never came. They could tell that something important had just happened, even if they were not sure what.

Walking back from the park, Mike forgot all about the lasting ramifications and the stuff of legend. You probably couldn’t plan out any legends anyway. They just had to happen.

It was comical to think about all the times students had asked him why they needed to know math. There was probably no other line of work where a person was asked that question so frequently. ‘Why do you do this?’, in other words.

Of course, the students didn’t see it that way. They saw it as though he could be doing any number of things. He could be driving an ice cream truck, and then kids would always be happy to see him. They were on opposite sides of it, he and Rico. At least in May it felt that way. He smiled because he thought he must feel glad about himself to joke like that.

As most of the kids ran up the hill that led to the school, some of the girls stayed behind.

“Why did you have us finish the calculations even though the calculator was working, Mr. Glank?” Tomasina said.

“I think you know why.”

“Because math is beautiful?”

“That’s right.”

It was harder to argue against the notion of math being beautiful now, what with it being May.

He hoped that math would still be beautiful later this afternoon when he would go back down to the park to pay Rico back what he owed him. He hoped it would be enough to have turned the panic in his face into something else.

As the other girls recounted excitedly everything that had happened down at the park, Hannah Vargas walked up very close to Mike.

“That was a good trick, Mr. Glank,” she said. “Next time you shouldn’t tell us to take our clipboards when we go to the ice cream truck. That gave it away.”

She smiled and shrugged, and took off running to join the other kids waiting and panting and looking out at the world at the top of the hill.