Lent, by the numbers

By Felix Carroll

I’ve given up beer for Lent.

My wife, sweets.

Our son, video games.

I now drink seltzer water weekend nights and go to bed unreasonably early. My wife now sneaks kale into dinner entrées and disappears off to Zumba. Our boy now takes apart calculators.

Welcome to Lent at 394 Main Road, where you’ll find a family retracing Christ's steps out into the desert for 40 days of self-denial, temptation and, in our boy’s case, passive aggression.

Not even 24 hours into his Lenten sacrifice of giving up video games, he takes apart the first calculator. Forty-eight hours into his Lenten sacrifice, we discover the entrails of a second calculator joining its broken brethren on the coffee table. What’s going on here? Sulking disguised as the scientific method? And how many calculators do we own, anyway?

He’s always been a builder, not a destroyer. The calculators aren’t the only things no longer adding up.

He loves his Wii “Indian Jones” game. He loves to pistol whip Nazis. We all do. But since he’s still only 9 — still years away from going Prodigal on me — we look to Lent as an opportunity to teach self-restraint. And if contemplating the wounds of Christ isn’t sinking in, a calculator can provide the catechesis he needs.

So sit down, Son. Let me tell you a little story …

Ya see, back in my day, when a boy was jonesen to press rubber buttons and make a little magic, all we had to work with was a calculator. A calculator! Heck, and this was before the calculator price wars of the mid-1970s. Gee whiz, your grandpa had to sell three head of cattle and your Aunt Bessie’s hula-hoop, and even then, all we could afford was a Texas Instrument Model 58 with a missing faceplate.

But my Lord, the fun we had. Once we figured out you could type in certain numbers then turn the calculator upside down to see certain words, heck, my mama would about do all she could just to peal us away from the durn thing. Looky here: When you type in 14, turn the calculator over, and you see it spells “hi.” Pretty cool, huh?

Well, soon we had all the neighborhood kids coming by. Lazy summer days were spent huddled under the sycamore tree just mesmerized, spelling things like “zig” (612), “lob” (807) and “leg” (637). You think Wii is fun? Get this: Did you know 71077345 spells “shelloil” and 3045 spells “shoe”? When we discovered 0.08 spells “boo” (sort of) — holy cow! The older Thompson boy — Matty … nice kid, kind of a pervert — came back the following day just about as excited as a June bug in jelly jar.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” he said, “Behold!” His stubby little fingers started working the 008s. Boy could he make that thing sing. Ya see, he figured it out that  “boo” was not an end in and of itself, but could serve to inaugurate more awesome words like “boob,” “boobs,” “boobies,” and “boobless” (8008, 58008, 5318008, 55378008, respectively).

Well, Son, as you can imagine, news of what we were up to spread throughout the village. Soon, townspeople gathered round our door with pitchforks and tiki torches demanding my pa destroy this … this … “Devil’s doohickey,” as they called it. But Pa was his own man, not prone to hysteria, and an early advocate of stress-free arithmetic. He was also a man of faith who understood that the same God who draws straight with crooked lines probably has something up his heavenly sleeve when it comes to the calculator.

Indeed! He’d gather us around the hearth, and together we’d spend Lenten evenings spelling godly words with upside down numbers.

Bible! Yes, you can spell “bible” (37818). And the Bible contains what? Yes — the Word of God. And in Greek, the Word of God is referred to as “logos.” Go ahead, type in “50607.” What’s it spell? Right: “logos.” Close enough.

And “bless”! (55378). Can you believe it! And “ego,” as in the Lord’s Lenten call to die to self in order to live in Him. Get it?

You see, God is good, Son. A little rough around the edges, but good.

Did you know you could also spell “hell.” You think that’s a coincidence? Not only “hell,” but Hell’s field office, which we know of as “ohio.” And “boil,” which is what you do in Hell, right?.

And “soil.” As in “dust.” As in “ash.” Remember, we come from ash, and to ash we shall return? And if you take apart one more calculator, what will happen? Right. You’ll return to ash sooner than you hope.

Now, we’ve got a few more weeks of Lent, and your task is to use the calculator to contemplate God’s clever goodness. Then, come Easter, I’ll teach you how to write “sissies.”

Now leave me alone as I try not to think of  “booze,” which, by the way, you can spell using 32008.

Yep. It’s all there, Son. Do the math. Ha! Get it? Do the math?

Ok, now where’s your mother? She better not be in the basement eating a cupcake.