2005 - Middle School, 6th grade
Jason Mattaniah Faron, that was his name. The first part, "Jason", was Greek in origin and meant "healer". The second part, "Mattaniah", an Israeli name, meant "gift or hope of the lord". And the last name, "Faron", was old-english and meant "Handsome Servant", which somehow morphed from an occupational name for herders of oxen. Put together, it made him sound like a great gift to the world that would give his time to help others.
Unlike most Americans, he decided to look up the meaning of his names and considered what they meant put together... And after he read the definitions from the various baby names websites, he smiled to himself, his name was pretty cool. Maybe someday he would steer the world away from some large catastrophe.
...He was always a bit shy, so politician was out of the picture. He would love to be a doctor, but blood made him feel sick, and he heard bad stories about their work-life. He did love math though, he loved math more than most kids his age. In fact, he had just sent a few applications to several different math camps.
...Well, actually, his parents sent the applications, it was also their idea in the first place. If it wasn't for them, he would never have even heard of those places. He did do the math though, so there was that.
Hmm, maybe there would be some great problem he could solve using math, and the whole world would benefit greatly from it.
Jason plucked himself out of the office chair and walked over to his bed. It wasn't quite his bedtime, but he wanted to think about things.
Thanks to the math puzzles that he was required to solve for the camp applications, he actually learned a few new symbols, one of those being the summation symbol. He thought it was especially cool how he could flip or transform the array of numbers he was adding together and solve the long summations in much fewer steps than they would normally take.
He thought it was so cool, in fact, that he might tell his friends once he got to school.
Except... he didn't really have anyone he considered a friend. There was just that one kid who followed him around sometimes, and he didn't really like math. There weren't really any people he could think of at school that did like math actua-
...Actually, there was one kid... but... he was the class clown... he was too outgoing and charismatic... and the teachers hated him, not because he was smart, but because he was condescending towards them. And he didn't really seem to notice whenever he sounded condescending...
-But he had to tell someone! He couldn't just keep this inside himself, it had to be shared with someone!
Jason walked over to where he set his backpack in his room and pulled out a stack of note-cards and a pencil. On several of the cards, he tried deriving more mathematical equations involving summations, and on a stack of five cards specifically set aside for importance, he wrote down whatever new rules he found.
___
It was near the end of math class and all the kids were walking out to recess. Josh got up with his group of friends and walked over to the door, but slowed and fell behind the group when he remembered something that piqued his curiosity.
That was his name, josh. His name was literally a synonym for "joke", which was quite fitting, since everything was a joke to him; nothing threatened him, and everything was funny to him.
Jason watched the group of friends walk out but remained seated. Maybe he was just being silly, maybe he should just keep his findings to himsel-
"Hey!" Josh spoke up in a loudly, "You glanced at me like fifty times today."
It was a statement, not a question. One that Jason wanted to deny, but couldn't. He nodded his head awkwardly, to which Josh only raised an eyebrow.
"D- Do you like math?" Jason hesitantly asked.
At this, josh's demeanor went from curious but guarded to surprised.
He leaned forward and widened his eyes a bit, "Yeah of course-" Then he caught himself, "But if you want help on homework, I'm not giving any."
Josh turned to leave, but was quickly stopped.
"No, that's not it." Jason took off his backpack and pulled out his math note-cards, laying them out on the table. Josh pulled over a chair and sat down.
"Have you ever seen this symbol?" Jason asked, pointing to the summation he drew earlier.
"Can't say I have..." Josh said as he examined the card further.
Jason was ecstatic, "This is a summation symbol!" He gleamed, "It means you add the equation on the right for each i, and i starts at whatever you set it to at the bottom, and counts until the top number!"
"Huh," Josh exclaimed. Now he was paying attention.
The teacher was about ask them to go to recess, but when she saw them discussing math together, instead of breaking up the rare meeting, she decided it would be more interesting to see what happened...
"Where did you find out about all this?" Josh finally asked the question.
"Oh, there are several different math camps, and their applications require that you solve these equations." Jason answered.
"Wait," Josh paused "there are math camps?"
"Of course!" Jason smiled.
"Show me!" Josh pleaded, almost grabbing Jason.
Jason was somewhat scared of Josh's behavior, but decided to walk over to one of the nearby computers and search for all the math camps he could find.
___
Jason walked off the shuttle bus and followed some adult towards the college campus where the math camp was to be held. He was a bit scared and he hadn't talked to anyone on the ride here, but he had at least one friend here, which of course was Josh, who decided it would be a good idea to become room-mates.
It was strange, Josh went from acting like a frivolous prick towards strangers, to acting like a clown to his group of friends, to deep thoughts about math and life most of the time with Jason. It was like his other personalities were just shells... And that talk about death had left Jason somewhat scarred so that he understood Josh's need for his shells.
The group around Jason started walking forwards, snapping him out of his thoughts.
The adult led the small group into campus, past several buildings, and into a tall building filled with bedrooms. Jason remembered his card, "Room 349" was where he would be staying. He strayed from the group to walk up stairs and down the hall to his room so he could drop off his luggage. Once he entered the room, he saw that Josh had arrived before him, but was no longer in his room, so he headed back down.
It was lunch time.
*****
2013 - College, Sophomore year
After reminiscing for a while, Jason decided it would be better to fall asleep. He didn't have any tests or finals tomorrow, but it was always better to study in the morning. If he didn't keep to his schedule, he would just do random things like look up the meaning of his name on Google or look through some new MLP fan creations.
It was Josh who had first introduced him to MLP. For some reason he just assumed Jason already knew about it, which led to an awkward conversation. In the end, he just decided to roll with it, and recommended that Jason watch the first few episodes to see if he liked it. So he did, and he was immediately hooked, though he wasn't sure why.
Maybe it was because of the characters, or the fluid animation, or the adorable ponies. Actually, it was probably all of those combined. What he wouldn't give to visit their land sometime... that was, if it existed, which it probably didn't...
But first, sleep...