When I was 17 I came to Cal. One of the classes I enrolled in first quarter was calculus. I think it fulfilled a Breadth requirement. I signed up with Nick and his friend Steve, who we called Cap’n Crunch. We took it Pass/Fail.

This was 1967. Actually it was Pass/Not Pass – failure was not an option. Nick and the Cap’n and I agreed to split up the work. That meant we all did okay on homework grades but tended to know only about a third of the material for tests. And also didn’t enjoy the course. But did well enough to not Not Pass.

Fast forward five years. I’m 22 and engaged to be married. I’m in the living room in Marin, with Dad and Andy.

Andy asks me a question. He’s looking at an odd shape on the paper in front of him (he’s on the carpeted floor by the fireplace and I’m curled up in a chair with a book, approximately above him).

He asks how to compute the area of the irregular shape. I gaze for a minute and then I say: “Well it isn’t like a square or rectangle, but how about if you cut it up into as many little squares as possible and then add together their areas? If you made the squares really small you’d get a close approximation.”

And while Andy is looking up at me with comprehension and agreement in his eyes Dad says, “Very good, Mar. You just explained calculus.”

Well I was astonished. And sorry. If only I’d known that’s one of the things we were doing, I think I would have paid some attention in class.