.....Round Tables & Round Numbers..... ................. A SHORT STORY.................

The roundtable AA NoonTime Attitudinal Adjustment meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas was–on that day–chaired by Sam W. But it is the only woman in this photograph who is sharing her story. Her name is Hillary C. The group is seated in the basement of St. Stephen's Church.
 

However, the centerpiece of this post is twenty-three people beyond the perimeter of the photograph.
 

Ten of those people were "guests" of other alcoholics. This sub-group was  commonly known as the 
"N. Whackers." 

That name is derived from the acronym of the college they attended. They were there because of an alcoholic commonly referred to as "The Professor." What that man had to "share" was significantly more profound and meaningful than anything Hillary C. ever said in Bentonville or the Governor's mansion. 
For the Whackers, this gathering was "the meeting before THE MEETING."

The narrator of this posted story is...Ernie Hemmingwide. 

Ernie is a retired security guard who was so fat he didn't need clothes, he needed aluminum siding. He didn't have a waist, he had a circumference. When he was caught shoplifting a candy bar from a liquor store, the court ordered him to attend AA meetings.

Trance Brignac had been an invaluable asset to the Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship because it included a dozen Philosophy majors from NorthWest Arkansas Community College. Before and after meetings, the Philo majors flocked around the defrocked “Professor.”
Helping other alcoholics is essential to the success of AA. Despite being a helpless drunk, Trance (Rhymes with FRANCE) was capable of uniquely helping other alcoholics who also happened to be studying philosophy, which is the art of thinking. As for this court-ordered attender of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, I helped one and only one alcoholic by driving him to meetings. It was a privilege to be the last chauffeur of Trance Millard Brignac.
His voluminous vodka intake was tolerated at four major universities but sleeping with a Chancellor’s wife was cause for dismissal. Such was not the case for dismissal at a prestigious Ivy League school because the Chancellor was gay. But Trance’s perfect pronunciation of all words Greek or Latin catapulted tenured Philosophy professors to dizzying heights of jealousy.

On this day, the after-meeting philosophy session involved fifteen folding chairs in St. Stephen's parking lot. The chairs were arranged semi-circularly around “T-Brin.” Fifteen folding chairs plus a standing room only section.
The weekly sessions lasted as long as an hour, during which time I energetically (but inconspicuously) walked laps around the perimeter of the church parking lot. The benefits of this exercise were manifold: to minimize the guilt associated with an addiction to Reese’s Pieces; to optimize the wisdom communicated from Trance Brignac to the college students; to prepare the body for the vodka that awaited both chaffeur and chauffee in the privacy of my home.
“Just because we sin is no reason NOT to go to church.”
According to Trance, St. Stephen’s was a split-level church. The Catholics congregated upstairs. Below them, alcoholics congregated in the "Church of Jack Daniels' Nightmare."
Were any of these students ever to violate the unwritten privacy rule and reveal to their community college philosophy instructors the name of their AA parking lot teacher, they probably would have been granted extra-credit. Between 1999 and 2001, “Brignac Studies” was taught at NorthWest Arkansas Community College (NWACC). A thirteenth generation French American, Trance’s ancestors were both exclusive colonial suppliers of cognac and significant cogs in the development of the Post Office and the Public Library. They let Benjamin Franklin take all the credit as long as they could take another drink.
For Trance, alcoholism was more a birthright than a disease. Another birthright was obtaining a Ph.D from either Yale or the University of Chicago. Seven consecutive Brignac generations had doctorates in Philosophy. Seven Ph.D's plus twenty-one DWI's.

That Pythagoras was the man who coigned the term Philosophy was something the NWACC students learned from Trance Brignac. “Quasi-alcoholics” was my term for the numerous classmates of the alcoholic Philo students who attended the AA meetings as “guests.” Their primary purpose for attendance was not to seek enlightenment about alcoholism but to join in the after-meeting sessions with the “Professor.”
*************************************

“Is seventy-two a round number in Greek?” asked a quasi-alcoholic named Alicia.
“I assume you’re asking that because of Plato’s ideal Republic,” replied Trance, in a professorially proper tone.
“Yes. I asked one of my teachers why Plato determined that the ideal government should rule over seventy-two states. She said it was because the Greeks regarded seventy-two as a ‘round number.’”
“An interesting response, indeed. στρογγυλό αριθμό is literal Greek for ‘round number.’
"In ancient Greece, that phrase meant more than a number ending in zeroes. In the original manuscript of Plato’s Republic, the author included a vary large circle with twelve numbers, at equal intervals, marked on it. Like a clock, the first four numbers were 1, 2, 3, and 4. But unlike a standard clock, the next two numbers were 6 and 8.”
A cloud of confusion descended upon the students.
“Allow me to demonstrate,” said Dr. Brignac, who always introduced himself at AA meetings with My name is T Brin and I'm an alcoholist.
“I need you to spread out in circular formation. But first: all the folding chairs must be returned to the downstairs AA meeting room.”
The students did exactly as they were told. Fifteen of them carried the chairs they had occupied across the parking lot and down the stairs. A half-dozen students, who had been standing behind their seated classmates, huddled together during the interim, talking about whatever students discuss in the back of a classroom, before the lecture begins.

Five minutes later:
“Alicia, would you please stand in what we will call the middle of the circle.”
He handed her a piece of lengthy string.
“As close to the end as possible, place your foot on the string.”
She eagerly did. Her fellow philosophy students, standing in circular formation around her, bubbled with excitement, as if this group of twenty-one college kids was a bunch of mute five-year-olds in a candy store. There was no chocolate candy but there was a piece of chalk taped to the other end of the string. On the asphalt surface of the parking lot, Trance stretched the string whose opposite end was tethered to the ground. Keeping the string taut, a perfectly drawn chalk circle created a foot-wide path between it and the human “circle.”
Alicia, whose silly-sounding question initiated this lesson, stood proud & tall and blonde & beautiful at the center of everything. Physically speaking, her footprint was the actual center of the actual circle but all eyes were upon T-Brin. Rolling up the piece of string, he untaped the chalkstick. He pocketed the string.
“In deference to the twelve steps of spiritual recovery, we now need twelve evenly spaced tick marks.”
Trance drew twelve inch-wide evenly-spaced tick marks around the chalk circle. The asphalt image was now a minimalist hands-free numberless clock.
“Alicia, please select which point will serve as ‘twelve o’clock.’”
She selected a point (or tick mark) that was directly in line with the larger-than-life statue of St. Stephen but she just as well could have selected any other point.
Dr. Brignac said “Thank you” and made a quick scan of his circular audience. All the while, his left index finger was focused on that point. (In this al fresco classroom, my friend was re-creating the ancient Greek "Groves of Academe" in the middle of Bentonville, Arkansas. It was my unique privilege to refer to him as "Dr.Brignac.")

“But now it is again time for the chalk to talk.”
He then pointed to the tick mark immediately to the right of the one designated by Alicia.
“Everybody, what number goes here?”
“One.”
“Correctimundo,” said the poly-linguist Trance. Aligned with that tick mark, he drew the digit 1 on the outer side of the circle. Repeating this call & response, the numbers two, three and four were chalked in place. Then, for the first time in this parking lot classroom, the teacher raised his voice to a shout.
“Ernie, what are the next two numbers?”
“Si-si-six and eight,” I shouted back, without breaking stride in my church-laps.
Normalizing his tone of voice and scanning the students, he said.
“Some of you might have remembered that I already gave you those numbers but as to what comes next involves where Alicia had earlier planted her foot. For all intents and purposes, her standing body is the center of the circle. If we drew a straight line (or diameter) from the 1 tick mark through the center, the other end of that line is where a regular clockmaker would put a 7 but this is not a regular clock.”
The shouting voice returned. “Heeeey, Ernieee. Whaaat’s the next numbaaa?”
“Sev-sev-seventy two,” answered Ernieee.
The teacher’s shouting voice was muted. “I taught him well.”
He wrote a 72 immediately outside it’s corresponding tick mark.
“The chalk gets a moment’s rest but I now need a mere molecule of brainpower from all the students of the world-famous NorthWest Arkansas Community College philosophy department. Direct your attention to the freshly drawn invisible diameter with numbers at opposite ends.”
He pointed to the 1 and the 72
“Please multiply these numbers.”
“SEVENTY-TWO,” was screamed loud enough to be heard throughout Bentonville.
“Do we need to write that answer anywhere?”
“NO!”
“Correct. Doing so would only add clutter to the diagram which disappeared from later editions of Plato’s Republic because editors were superstitious about this clock-face. They were afraid to alter the look of Time. Now, however, we need to complete this utterly unique clock-face but I have it from my higher authority that doing so will not get us turned into a pile of salt. Just because it was obvious that 1x72=72 does not mean that it is not important. I repeat: Just because it was obvious that 1x72=72 does not mean that it is not important.
“Please use your imagination to draw another invisible diameter from the point labelled 2 and utilize a bunch of brain molecules to put a number at the opposite end of that invisible line.”
A mist of confusion fell over the human circle.
“To translate what I just said, answer this question: two times what is equal to seventy-two?”
“THIRTY-SIX.”
...
...
Where ordinarily on a clock-face would be the nine, ten eleven and twelve. On the Platonic clock were a 24, 18, 12, and 9. I will leave it to the reader to do the Platonic math. And if the reader is willing to tempt fate, he/she can duplicate what effectively was censored from conceivably the first book ever written about “ideal government.” (This may also have been the first oxymoron.)
***
Almost as loud as the student’s shouted answers was the applause for "Professor Brin." He had a Ph.D in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and a Master's Degree in Humility from the University of Alcoholics Anonymous.
“STOP! Most of that applause is misdirected. For asking what seemed like a childish question, Alicia deserves half of that applause. There would be no intelligent answers in this world if it weren’t for courageous students asking simple questions. The other half of your applause should go to her philosophy teacher who originally referred to the number seventy-two as a ‘round number.’
“That teacher was figuratively a relay runner who passed the figurative baton to Alicia who passed it to me. But I was already standing at the finish line. The Greek alphabet looks nothing like our own and the ancient Greeks actually meant for seventy-two not to be a ‘round number’ as the modern English language defines it but as a very very very divisible number.
“If Plato were a fan of hip-hop, he would have repeatedly said ‘break it down.’”
“BREAK IT DOWN.”
“As in ‘Seventy-two. What do you do? Break it down to 36 times 2.’ THEN ‘Seventy-two. Can’t you see? Break it down to 24 times 3’...etcetera, etcetera. But, in fact, Plato’s Republic was a serious document about how government could best serve the people. Think of different government services: schools, hospitals, libraries, police stations, fire houses, public transit... Ideally, these services–and many others–could be ‘equally’ distributed throughout the nation. Imagine quality schools in each state with thirty-six public libraries each serving two states. Eight equally equipped hospitals each serving nine states ...etcetera, etecetera,
“Of course, in ancient Greece, Plato’s ‘states’ were not the equivalent of Texas nor Idaho nor Rhode Island. But we can imagine neighboring ‘states’ like Israel and Lebanon having an inter-library lending system; musical performers on stages of both ‘states’ with appreciative audiences freely mixing Jews and Arabs. As John Lennon once said Imagine all the people living life in peace.
“And now for my closing words: Math knowledge is knowing that 8x9 =72. Math wisdom is using that fact to help make a better world. Enough said. Everybody go home.”
“Tha-tha-that includes you-you, Professor Brin.”
...
This chauffeur thought he got the last words in. Close but no cucumber. My stutter was bogus. It enabled me to not have to share at AA meetings.
As we were pulling out of the parking lot, Alicia hailed the Honda. Trance was in the backseat. He opened the window.
“Professor Brin, early in the lesson, you mentioned your higher authority. I am curious to know what your higher authority looks like.”
“Whatever you want him to look like.”
“That is sooooo cool. Thank you for sharing.”
“It would have been impossible to share as I did, Alicia, if you hadn’t the courage to ask that simple question. Thank you!”