How To Erect A Perpendicular

 "Where the Hell’s my goddamned framing square?" asked Walt. We were out on a job together for the first time and I was a fairly new hire with the company.

"Dunno." I said. "Last I noticed, I think I saw it laying on the bench back at the shop.

"Damn!" he said. "And just when I really need it right now too."

"What for?" I asked.

"To square to goddamned lines with it you dumbass!"  Walt snarled. 

"We’ve got to layout the opening for a big overhead door in this here concrete wall and cain’t afford no screwups. I plumbed the two sides of the door yestidday, now I got to layout where to cut for the header. What the hell did you think I wanted my square for anyway, to file my fricking nails or comb my hair with it?”

Old Walt had a charming way about him for damned sure. And nobody liked to work with him except maybe some of the other old farts in the outfit. Crotchety, opinionated and 'sot in his ways', as some would say. I guess that's only to be expected from someone who's worked the same job for the same outfit for nearly forty years. I think it'd gotten to the point that Walt figured he was more important than the actual owners of the company, and could be he was actually right about that too, but not in a good way. More’s the pity.

Me, I can work with just about damned near anybody. That comes from putting up with all the bullshit while serving in the Marines I guess. That and my old Pop could be mighty damned snarky himself too, back in the day. Anyway, the boss put me with Walt that day and there I was.

"Gotcha measuring tape with ya Walt?" I asked.

"Well, Hell yes, smart ass!" Walt growled. "How'd you think I got my height line to start with? Besides, my tape’s just about growed to my ass like a big old, fat wart by now anyhow."

"Well then, why doncha just 3, 4, 5 to your line then?" I said reasonably - at least I thought. 

"What in the ding ding shitfire hell are you even talking about?" He said this words in a short staccato way, like with periods after each word, and loudly too.

"What kind of idiot talk is that?" He nearly shouted.

"You know Walt, 3, 4, 5 - right triangle, basic geometry, that kind of stuff." I said. Really, I was trying to be helpful and truthfully was a little surprised he wasn't already doing so.

"Geometry!" He snorted. "You must be totally fricking crazy kid Hell, I cain't even spell 'geometry!'"

This I could damned well believe now after just these first couple minutes spent one on one with Walt.

Still, I tried to be reasonable and helpful, such is the kind of guy that I am.

"You know Walt, you can make an accurate right angle with just your ruler or tape measure."

"No way Son, goddamned cain’t be done!” 

“Damned sure can!” 

I wasn’t gonna let this old fart bulldoze me, no way, no how. I might be a kid compared to him, but I’d done my hard time in the Marines. Ain’t nobody gonna run over this ol’ boy without at least first losing the most and best part of his ass.

“OK then smart guy, show me!” He demanded.

"You got it." I said, maybe a little too promptly. 

“You say you got your door heighth already marked?” I asked.

“Oh Hell yes!”

“OK then, now just measure down from your heighth mark four feet and make a mark on your line.” 

Walt gave me a look like I was nuts, but he grudgingly he did as I asked. I could see from the look on his face he was already prepping himself to lay me out with some major insults, sarcasm and sneers. I'm sure he was already planning the crap he was gonna lay on the rest of the boys back at the shop about how he screwed with the dumb assed new guy.

“There!” he said triumphantly. “Now show me my goddamned right angle! Maybe you see one, but I still don't.”

“All in good time Walt. All in good time” I said calmly. I could see Walt didn’t like my attitude all that much. I was also thinking, this could turn out to be fun - you just never know do you?

“There’s a couple of steps to this Walt. But after you learn this you may just want to donate your framing square to the Salvation Army.” I couldn’t resist a little pause and emphasis on the word ‘learn’ which did not escape old Walt at all. Seemed like the old coot might be pretty sensitive to some words. Who knew? Hey, fun!

“I don’t think so!” he sneered.  “I know by God I coulda laid out fifteen fricking right angles by now with my framing square goddammit!” 

“Well maybe yeah Walt”, I said. ‘but your framing square is way back at the shop now ain’t it Walt?  You want to drive all the way over there and back again, or do you want to just go ahead and learn how to make a right angle to your line without a framing square? Hell, your square is probably all banged up and bent to shit by now anyway ain't it? When’s the last time you checked it for square?”

Walt gave me a godawful shitty look then and one short, grumpy snort. Yes by God, this WAS going to be fun! Now I by God knew in my heart he'd NEVER checked that square! Such is the kind of guy Walt is. Oh yes, yes!

“Just hold onto your horses now Walt. This ain’t gonna take too long.  Remember, you asked me to show you and that’s exactly what I'm gonna do.”

"I ain't asked you to do a goddamned thing!" he growled. " I TOLD you to show me and that's what I'm a-waiting for. So when ya actually gonna get to it?"

I just ignored this and said,

“Next thing now Walt, measure over three feet from your four-foot line at the height mark and make a mark. Do the same thing another a few inches below that and draw a short line between the two points.”

“Goddamned lotta trouble just to make one itty-bitty little fricking right angle to a line if you ask me!” Walt sneered.

But, he made the marks and I ignored this dig too. I can do that these days, besides I could see I was getting his attention now. The old bastard might be over the hill for sure but he still had a spark of curiosity left in his beastly old ass.

“By God THERE!” He said as he backed away from the wall. “NOW by God show me my goddamned right angle!”

“Just one more step, Walt. Patience! Patience! Just hold them damned horses, OK?” 

Walt didn't like that much either but he only muttered and kicked the wall a little with the toe of his boot. I’m just guessing he must be some kind of early home-schooled educational Luddite.

“OK Walt,” I said, “now go back to your first four foot mark and measure five feet from there where it hits the short line between your three-foot marks, and make a mark there.”

I could see Walt was now getting really interested but trying very hard not to show it. He did as I asked without further comment.

I said, “OK Walt, now draw yourself a line from there back to the other four-foot mark, and there’s your right angle to your line. Easy, peasy, three, four, five! Duck soup, Walt!”

He damned sure didn’t like that. Not even one damned little bit.

"Don’t look like no goddamned right angle to me!” He snorted, not really even looking at it. It was a perfect right angle of course and I could tell he was convinced himself.  But he was cornered now and his pride was being pricked big time. It was time for me to twist the knife.

“Seriously Walt?” I said. “That’s’ a mathematically accurate right angle there, according to the centuries-old Pythagorean Theorem in Euclidian Geometry.”

“Pie-Thago-What?” Walt wailed. “You-Clid-A-Who? What kind of crazy hippy horseshit talk is that?”

Here I will admit I might look like a hippy according to Walt. While my hair is still close-cropped military style, I do now sport a mustache and beard - both which I try to keep fairly neatly trimmed. Walt himself is always clean-shaven from the neck up, with no facial or head hair at all. I don’t know whether he’s bald or just chooses to shave his head. Either way, his head looks like a brown Easter egg with a white top where his MAGA cap shades the top of his head from the sun.

“The Pythagorean Theorem, Walt. Everybody knows about that, leastwise anybody with half a lick of sense.”

This implication made the gorge start rising in Walt’s face, but I kept right on, kinda mean of me looking back on it I can see, but I could not help it now.

“You know Walt, the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides.” 

“Just your basic math stuff Walt. You know, A squared plus B squared equals C squared.” 

I said. Well yes, I knowing throwing that bit of A,B,C stuff in right there was damned mean of me for sure but, it felt good too.

And right there’s where poor old Walt rocketed straight up off the planet Earth and straight up into the stratosphere at warp speed. I don't think he'd ever cottoned to any algebra he might have accidentally brushed up against in his life.

“Goddamnit kid, don’t give that mumbo-jumbo hansy-pansy garbage shitcan full of your intellectual crap talk, Hyppotta wussies, whatever!”  Walt shouted, his eyes glazing over and going kinda all crazy in his face.

He emphasized the ‘intellectual’ part by drawing out the word into at least six, might have been eight syllables, at some pretty high decibels and with a good bit of wind behind it too. At this point, I knew he was totally exercised. In a word, Walt was now very very pissed and it was all my damned fault too and it felt pretty damned good to me too.

“If regular good old adding, subtraction and division was good enough for Jesus, then by God it’s good enough for me! I don’t need no goddamned A-squared You-Clid-A-Who’s, Hypotta-wussies or Pie-Thago-What’s!” he hollered.

That right there finally convinced me who and what I was really dealing with here in old Walt. At first, I’d thought, hopefully, naively, that Walt's MAGA hat was just an affectation, but the reality was now clear. That MAGA horseshit was the real deal with poor dear old Walt. I figured it best now to just try to settle him down without antagonizing him any more. I knew it would be better for the company after all, not to mention best for me, myself.

But, I didn’t. This is just a peculiar personal problem I seem to have which I have to fight constantly against. Sometimes I lose like this time, so instead, I said in my contrarian-when-piqued way, 

“Walt, do you want me to show you how to graphically erect a perpendicular to any line?”

“Goddammit that’s it! That’s it! That’s it I’m a-telling you!” He exploded and you'd a-thought old Walt was a candidate for the bin the way he shouted and hollered that out.

“Just one more goddamned word of profanity and perversion out of that goddamned uppity smart assed mouth or yourn and I’m gonna have your goddamned intellectual ass fired!" He hollered.

"I ain’t got the time, the will and especially not the Christian patience to listen to any more of your filth!” 

Even then there was probably still a very slim possibility things might have been OK if I’d only just shut up right then instead of asking him, 

“Walt, you do know about the relationship of Pi to a circle, don’t you? You know, the formula for the area of any circle is equal to Pi times r squared, in other words Walt, P, r square.”

“PIE ARE NOT SQUARE!” Walt screamed. “PIE ARE ROUND!”

My new job is nice.