When I was but a fair seventeen years old, I began my senior year at ye olde Marcus High School. The class was Calculus AB. Difficult, yes, but I persisted. Along the way, I met many cronies who would later hold a special bond. There was Ryan, Tim, Anthony (“Tony”), Bill, Jared, Nate, Rob, and Andrew. Who would have guessed that such things as derivatives would bond us together.

December arrived, and Calculus AB concluded. But with the dawn of a new year and new millennium, Calculus BC also rose. Now, the real technicalities of BC allude me, I remember terms like “Taylor Series” and “polar mode” on the TI-83 calculators, but that’s about it.

I’m sure we’ve all had math classes, and teachers, when they need to show a movie, turn to the ONLY one every made: STAND AND DELIVER. Edward James Olmos turns in an Oscar-worthy performance as Jaime Escalante, the L.A. high school math teacher who teaches AP Calculus to inner-city students. This story really hit close to home in my senior year, when I, too, was preparing for the AP exam.

Anyway, back to the beginnings of Calculus Club…every Friday, Mrs. Brown would assign a “calculus essay” which really wasn’t an essay, but problems similar to those on the AP exam. We would gather at 2021 Concord Drive in Flower Mound, Texas, just as Mr. Escalante’s students did. OK, so it wasn’t inner city, but whatever. And so the night before these essays were due, Rob and I would drive to Andrew’s house on Concord Drive, usually around 8 or 8:30.

And so a typical night begins…Rob would pick me up, or I’d pick him up and we would make the first stop: Albertson’s. Around 8:30 to 9, they put out the day-old donuts. If we were lucky, there would be éclairs, crème-filled, or chocolate sprinkles. 12 specialty donuts for only 99 cents.

We would arrive to see John listening to Paul Simon records and JeLain in a kimono watching Home & Garden Television. Rob and I would first go to the kitchen, where there was always Diet Coke available to drink in green cups. Armed with green cups in one hand and calculus books in another, we traversed upstairs, with Gizmo and Bunny in tow.

The billiards table lay in wait, subtly enticing us with its soft, navy felt and fine oak trim. “Just one game,” Rob would say. I always agreed, and we’d play. Sometimes 8-Ball, sometimes Cutthroat with Andrew, or once in awhile the game we invented, Police Lineup.

At 9:00, the real television programming would begin. Strip Poker, a most scandalous game show with no real point, aired on KSTAR 49, a low-class Dallas area station. Following Strip Poker was TENS. On TENS, two Gen-X hosts would go to beaches in L.A. or clubs in Miami and find young, beautiful people and interview them. Normally the girls were very tan, wore string bikinis, and wanted to be actresses. The men were buff, sometimes black, and ALWAYS did kung fu kicks. I don’t know why, but it wasn’t a bad show.

At this point it was 10:00, and no calculus had really been done. But that was OK. It was the fellowship I came for. By the time April rolled around, we were quite tired of high school, AP tests, and calculus homework. Thursday nights at Andrew’s turned into Mondays at Andrew’s, Tuesdays at Andrew’s, Thursdays…well, you get the point. Occasionally, we called it simply “Club”, since there was little calculus being done. At the end of the evening, Rob and I would leave with the leftover day-old donuts in tow. If we were in high spirits, we'd throw them in the neighbors' yards, put them in the mailbox, on Andrew's windshield, or under his tires.

It was always the same. Of course, there were some changes here and there. John would listen to crazy New Age music, which Rob loved for some reason. When it came time to take the Calculus BC AP exam, we were very ready. And not because we had studied, but because we had made t-shirts. These were not just any t-shirts. They were red with black, block letters that read, "CALCULUS THUG". And so we were. Only five shirts were made, but they vastly improved our scores on the test.

Once the test was over, high school was pretty much over. After all, my spring semester had four classes: Senior In (first period off, get to school around 10:30), Adaptive P.E. with the special ed kids (Mondays were swim days at the Flower Mound Natatorium), Calculus (post-test…no work to be done), and then Varsity Drama. Oh, what a day. I didn’t even bring a backpack.

When it came time to graduate, Andrew’s parents bestowed the greatest gifts upon Rob and I. We received identical gift packages: each containing a green cup, a $10 gift certificate to Albertson’s, and a CD of John’s New Age music. Very thoughtful, in my opinion. I think my parents just gave Andrew money…

Three months later, we left for our respective institutions of higher learning. Three months after that…Andrew’s parents sold the house and moved to Florida to pursue their dreams of running a day care (or something). 2021 Concord Drive was sold for a pretty penny, and with it, our memories. That’s the story of Calculus Club. To close,

You see, we don’t read and write calculus because it’s cute. We read and write calculus because we are members of the human race. And the human race is full of passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering: these are noble pursuits necessary to sustain life, but calculus, beauty, romance, and love. These are what we stay alive for.

Cheers.