Definitions

One of the hardest things about my job as a professional mathematician is trying to come up with the correct definitions. And I am not talking about the boldfaced ones, silently introducing the arrival of a theorem like the text message "You've got plans for tonight? Fancy a beer or two?" portending a mind-numbing hangover. I am talking about the actual definition of my job.

Be it on a reception of a friend who finally found a job, toasting to the arrival of a new rat in the race, at the airport, anxiously awaiting the arrival of your bag, on a party, hastily downing a beer or two until the buzz in your brain is big enough to safely ignore the first chapters from the unwritten textbook on 'Social Engineering', or at the Christmas table, spending a stiff first night with your parents-in-law, there's always this one particular moment - usually marking the ending of a silence which would otherwise become even more awkward - in which someone ignites the dreaded conversation:

-"So, what do you do for a living?".

-"Errr, I'm a mathematician."

This may seem like a perfectly harmless opener to you, but it is nothing less than the socializing mathematician's nightmare. Either you get a puzzled face blankly staring at you ("A mathematician? Not wearing glasses? Having a beer?"), often followed by an almost robotic "Oh, how interesting!" and two eyes nervously scanning the place for the nearest exit, or you get an overly enthousiastic "Oh, so that means we're colleagues! What are you working on?". The latter scenario results in me scanning the room for the nearest exit - I meet enough mathematicians at work, no need to do so outside our habitat - the former in trying to steer away from the subject.

Not that I don't like to talk about mathematics though, it's just that people's attitude towards mathematicians is rather polarized. For some strange reason, meeting a math-whizz evokes either scientofobic laughter in people, or an almost pious admiration - as if we are Chosen Ones, spending our devout lives staring at codes that need to be cracked. When someone tells me he's very good in reciting sentences backwards, I feel absolutely no urge to apologize myself for the fact that I can't. But when I tell people I'm a mathematician, things are different: "Oh, mathematics. Sorry, I've never been too good in that." Underlined with the compassionate look I try to keep for special occasions, like a blind colleague telling me his wife left him when she heard he has testicular cancer.

Next time you meet a mathematician, people, there's no need to be so humble. We're lucky bastards after all, being able to do a job which consists of doing things we're good at. Staring at an equation holding on to its solutions like a lioness guarding her cubs, slurping coffee all day long (which is actually Paul Erdos' definition: 'a mathematician is a machine turning coffee into theorems'), locking ourselves into our brain, playing a formal game of beauty. Next time, please proceed as follows:

-"So, what do you do for a living?".

-"Errr, I'm a mathematician."

- "Pft, big deal. Can you say that backwards, by the way? I met a guy who can do that in a second, he's amazing!"

Definition:

A mathematician is like an IKEA closet: always a few screws loose, but put them in any living room and they will perfectly blend in with the wallpaper.