A cheaper way to get a nap

While certain Tiny Family Members last weekend were learning about the intricate workings of the local sewer system, another family member was being introduced to the less-understandable workings of opera. Although attending an opera (a French word meaning "an expensive way to get a nap") was not entirely in keeping with the family member's own free will, she bore it with good humor and graciously shared her knowledge with us.

"We're seeing 'La Trattoria,' I think," she said, waving her hand airily."Or maybe that's the name of a restaurant...something like that."

During the opera she received a call from her husband, inquiring whether the opera was over, so that she could rejoin him and two Tiny Family Members who had been placed in his care during her absence. He was quite sure the opera must be close to being over.

"It's not over yet," she whispered into the phone. "The heroine hasn't died yet. We can't leave until the heroine dies."

It was some time before the heroine departed this world -- "died of a broken heart, of course " -- and in the meantime the rest of us continued with our family dinner, which was punctuated by knock-knock jokes from Tiny Family Members. There was also an abundance of "Why did the ____ cross the ____?" jokes, most of which were made up on the spot and were inspired by objects in sight, e.g., "Why did the carrots cross the table?"

When the heroine had finally expired and the family member returned from the opera, she still thought the name might have been 'La Trattoria,' although she believed it might possibly contain an additional syllable in there somewhere. We were scandalized to learn that there were English subtitles, as the whole point of opera seems to be lost if you can understand what is going on. Understanding the words, however, had evidently not been enough to keep certain patrons from falling asleep during the performance.

"Well," said the family member, "I hope those people had something exciting to do after the opera, because they were all rested up by then."

If one finds going to the opera a bit too expensive of a way to take a nap, one can experience much the same effect from reading Joe's math textbook, which I did on the way home from the family dinner to keep Joe awake. It failed to keep ME awake, but that was irrelevant.

I read page after page of text, which may as well have been in Italian for all I could understand it. "Where are the subtitles?" I said, flipping through the pages.

"What subtitles?"

"You know, where they explain all this in plain English."

Lacking subtitles, I soon started interjecting my own interpretations:

"Tails of all possible distributions can be classified into three categories in bounded distributions which have no tails (because they tragically lost them in a meat cleaver accident...)."

"Extreme value distribution of the ordered data must belong to one of just three possible general families (Smith, Jones, Magillicuddy...)..."

These interpretations were not entirely met with appreciation by the Math Purist, who seemed by all appearances to comprehend what I was reading, and indeed showed some degree of excitement over comparisons of fat-tailed and thin-tailed distributions.

As for me, next time I need a good nap, the opera might be the way to go.