Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe Read Online Free PDF Page B

The truth is that I got to like the war Dante was having with shoes. One day, I just broke down and asked him. “So how come you have this thing with shoes?”
    “I don’t like them. That’s it. That’s all. There’s no big secret here. I was born not liking them. There’s nothing complicated about the whole thing. Well, except there’s this thing called my mom. And she makes me wear them. She says there are laws. And then she talks about the diseases I could get. And then she says that people will think I’m just another poor Mexican. She says there are boys in Mexican villages who would die for a pair of shoes. ‘Youcan afford shoes, Dante.’ That’s what she says. And you know what I always tell her? ‘No, I can’t afford shoes. Do I have a job? No. I can’t afford anything.’ That’s usually the part of the conversation where she pulls her hair back. She hates that people might mistake me for another poor Mexican. And then she says: ‘Being Mexican doesn’t have to mean you’re poor.’ And I just want to tell her: ‘Mom, this isn’t about poor. And it isn’t about being Mexican. I just don’t like shoes.’ But I know the whole thing about shoes has to do with the way she grew up. So I just wind up nodding when she repeats herself: ‘Dante, we can afford shoes.’ I know the whole thing has nothing to with the word ‘afford.’ But, you know, she always gives me this look. And then I give her the same look back—and that’s how it goes. Look, me and my mom and shoes, it’s not a good discussion.” He stared out into the hot afternoon sky—a habit of his. It meant he was thinking. “You know, wearing shoes is an unnatural act. That’s my basic premise.”
    “Your basic premise?” Sometimes he talked like a scientist or a philosopher.
    “You know, the founding principle.”
    “The founding principle?”
    “You’re looking at me like you think I’m nuts.”
    “You are nuts, Dante.”
    “I’m not,” he said. And then he repeated it, “ I’m not .” He seemed almost upset.
    “Okay,” I said, “You’re not. You’re not nuts and you’re not Japanese.”
    He reached over and unlaced my tennis shoes as he talked. “Take off your shoes, Ari. Live a little.”
    We went out into the street and played a game that Dante made up on the spot. It was a contest to see who could throw their tennis shoes the farthest. Dante was very systematic about the way he made up the game. Three rounds—which meant six throws. We both got a piece of chalk and we marked where the shoe landed. He borrowed his father’s tape measure that could measure up to thirty feet. Not that it was long enough.
    “Why do we have to measure the feet?” I asked, “Can’t we justthrow the shoe and mark it with the piece of chalk? The farthest chalk mark is the winner. Simple.”
    “We have to know the exact distance,” he said.
    “Why?”
    “Because when you do something, you have to know exactly what you’re doing.”
    “No one knows exactly what they’re doing,” I said.
    “That’s because people are lazy and undisciplined.”
    “Did anybody ever tell you that sometimes you talk like a lunatic who speaks perfect English?”
    “That’s my father’s fault,” he said.
    “The lunatic part or the perfect English part?” I shook my head. “It’s a game, Dante.”
    “So? When you play a game, Ari, you have to know what you’re doing.”
    “I do know what we’re doing, Dante. We’re making up a game. We’re throwing our tennis shoes on the street to see which one of us can throw his shoe the farthest. That’s what we’re doing.”
    “It’s a version of throwing the javelin, right?”
    “Yeah, I guess so.”
    “They measure the distance when they throw the javelin, don’t they?”
    “Yeah, but that’s a real sport, Dante. This isn’t.”
    “It is too a real sport. I’m real. You’re real. The tennis shoes are real. The street is real. And the rules we establish—they’re real too.