Daniel T.S. Chen

Story time!

Welcome to the story section. I’ll occasionally post funny/provocative/intriguing stories. This is not meant to be educational.

Footsteps (Inspired by true story. Discretion is advised…)

It was a Sunday afternoon and I was home alone. I lived on the forth floor of a slightly old-looking building. There was an exam the next day, and I was sitting in front of my desk battling with the math textbook. The sunshine traveled through the half-opened blind into my room. It would have been a great day to just relax and bathe under the sunlight. But there was a test.

This reminded me of a particular scene from a TV show reenacting stories of haunted houses. The family was moving out of the house when the undead man appeared behind the escaping lady and attempted to keep her in the building he claimed for himself. It was a Sunday afternoon like this, too.

Upon this thought, the sun hid behind the cloud and wind seeped into the seemingly closed window. And then it went silent, leaving only the sound of steady footsteps:

Flap, flap, flap…

It sounded like a man, a grown man, slowly and steadily climbing up the dark, twirly staircase. Who could it be?

Flap, flap, flap…

The racing heartbeat juxoposes the metronome-like footsteps. Like an amateur jazz band playing a slow swinging blues, each heartbeat just landed slightly in front of the intended placement. I couldn’t focus on the test prep as my fingers grew rigid and back muscles tensed up. As if it was also afraid, the sun buried itself in the blanket of clouds, leaving me in the dark, slightly chilly room, alone.

Flap, flap, flap…

If it was a person, he would’ve arrived by now. But he kept walking, closer and closer, slowly and deliberately, as if he was coming for me.

Flap, flap.

It stopped. Wind crawled into the room and tickled my calves. I put my head down. I held my breath as if it will somehow conceal my existence. My door creaked loudly while it slowly shut itself, leaving me in the dark, slightly chilly room, alone, and with no escapes.

The obnoxiously loud crash of the front door breaks the silence like the fireworks celebrating the return of heroic soldiers – my parents were back. I jumped up and sprinted through the door and ran as fast as I could down the four-story building, trying to forget that I wasn’t the only one who walked that flight of stairs that afternoon. I safely reached the ground floor and tears bursted out of my tiny eye sockets while my parents comforted me. I was not alone. The sun peeked at the reunited family and warmed the earth for the last time of the day.

I’ve never heard those footsteps again.

The Spear and the Shield

The word for “contradictory” in Mandarin is 矛盾; the former character means spear, and the latter means shield. And the story goes as follow.

Way way back in time in the ancient streets of China, two salesmen were trying to sell their products.

“Come buy my shield! It’s the sturdiest shield in the world! No weapon can peirce through my shield!” One of the saleman exclaimed.

“Come buy my spear! It’s the sharpest spear in the world! It can pierce through any object!” The other saleman yelled.

Then, a curious guy came along and asked, “Well, if you, sir, have the strongest spear and you, sir, have the strongest shield, then why don’t you try stabbing the strongest shield with the strongest spear?” This is paradoxal because one of the saleman must be lying. Hence, the word “spear-shield.”

This is quite an unsatisfactory ending, isn’t it? So, who won? Did they try stabbing the shield with the spear? Or did they awkwardly walk away from the smart dude who pointed everything out? Maybe they even partnered with each other and sold the shield and spear as a set for 15 percent off?

Dr. KC resolved the mystery: the spear salesman won, but not by showing that his spear can pentrate the strongest shield, but by stabbing the other saleman! The moral of the story is: if you can’t solve your problem, destroy the source of the problem!

Dr. Wiener’s Lunch

This is a story told by professor Peter Thomas in MATH 378 (Computational Neuroscience).

Professor Thomas’s advisor, Jack Cowan, studied at MIT when Norbert Wiener, who invented the Wiener Process, was there. Apparently, Dr. Wiener would lecture with a chalk in one hand and eraser in the other. While he wrote the theorems and proofs down on the board with one hand, he would erase what was written immediately with the other. Professor Thomas conjectured that this was some type of mechanism for finding those who are mathematically talented…

Also, there was once Dr. Cowan walked up to Dr.Wiener in the cafeteria as Dr. Wiener was about to leave. They talked for a bit. And upon ending the conversation, Dr. Wiener asked:

“Was I entering the cafeteria or was I about to leave?”

Dr.Cowan reminded him that he was leaving. Then, Dr. Wiener replied:

“Oh! In that case, I must have eaten,” and left the cafeteria.