Roller

He asked somebody to raise their hand and ask him when we would use calculus in our everyday life. So one student rose their hand and asked, “When are we going to use this in our everyday life?”

“NEVER!!” the teacher exclaimed. “You will never use calculus in your normal, everyday life. In fact, very few of you will use it in your professional careers either.” Then he paused. “So would you like to know why should care?”

Several us nodded.

He picked out one of the varsity football players in the class. “You practice football a lot during the week, right Tim?” asked the teacher.

“Yeah,” replied Tim. “Almost every day.”

“Do you and your teammates ever lift weights during practice?”

“Yeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend a lot of practice in the weight room.”

“But why?” asked the teacher. “Is there ever going to be a play your coach tells you use during a game that requires you to bench press the other team?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why lift weights?”

“Because it makes us stronger,” said Tim.

“Bingo!!” said the teacher. “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.”

- Our future tense requires only one word (looking at you, Spanish)

- Words don’t change meanings depending on tone (Cantonese)

- We don’t live in some bizarre Beauty And The Beast world where we give inanimate objects genders (romance languages, German)

- Likewise, we don’t have have two different words for “they” because we don’t care whether “they” were male or female (Spanish, French)

- There’s no formal “you” because we don’t play mind games about whether or not we respect you (Spanish, German)

- We don’t alter the whole fucking language based on how much we respect you (Japanese)

- The letters and sounds might not be consistent, but at least we have letters, not just pictures (Mandarin)

- We don’t have a fucking stupid tense specifically for talking to two people because some idiot decided that a two-person tense was necessary (Arabic)