More or Less



Live It
More or Less

Nothing to it
by Sandra Staas (Mon Aug 02, 2010)

I'm an approximate type of person. I believe in approximations of numbers, of not being accurately accurate. Numbers bother me.

I'll never get a job as a carpenter nor a bank cashier, that's for sure. I wouldn't hire me. Imagine a client asking for their bank account balance. I'd be answering, ‘Well, more or less, $2,500. Sort of, that is, give or take a few dollars, I think.' I'd be cutting wood after measuring it using my fingers and get a rough idea of how long the piece should be. If you cut it big enough then you can always trim it, that's my philosophy. How much has to be trimmed? Just a teeny wee bit, that's all.

People sometimes ask me for my recipes. I tell them, some butter, some sugar, flour, eggs, milk. They have their pens ready, their little notebook open as they await the accurate measurements. Out of luck! I haven't a clue how much butter or sugar or flour or milk. Now, eggs I can manage. It's usually one. Hmm. Sometimes it's two, could be three. Maybe it depends on how much milk I use. How much milk do I use? Now we're going in circles. As long as it tastes good, that's what counts. No pun intended.

Occasionally I have to fill out forms. Those boring ones that include a question about how much you weigh. Who the hell's business is it how much I weigh? On a good day I can weigh not so much. On a bad day I can look like Winnie the Pooh. If my clothes are tight then I know it's time to cut back on the fabulously farty fresh fruit diet of red wine and chocolate strawberries. I don't need to weigh myself. And I'm quite happy with being approximately at an acceptable weight.

I've seen people measure the distance between the flowers they're planting. Are they mad? They're down on their hands and knees, tape measure held taut as they carefully measure the exact length between each plant. They're the ones who probably know precisely how much gas they still have in their car, and what the exact time of day it is, down to the second.

I've never grasped the concept of what zero means either, and therefore I've also never grasped what 1,000,000 means. So many zeros! But if zero means nothing, how can placing a one in front of so many of them make it a great big number? I totally do not understand.

And if figuring out what zero is all about isn't bad enough, what about negative numbers? What numbskull thought them up? Does anyone really know what a negative number means? Something tells me that that silly little zero is involved yet again. Two-faced wimp. Happy and sad at the same time. Causer of untold misery to the masses who strive to be positive. Nobody wants to be negative. Not even a number.

Yes indeed, down with accuracy. Live life dangerously without inhibitions of statistics or those pesky preposterous zeros that are just too difficult to comprehend. Long live approximations. Revitalize your life with more or lesses.

There's nothing to it.