fermented bitterness

so i wanted to tell a story. this story is about one bright spring day in astronomy class in high school. My teacher was the teacher of physics and astronomy and some random other science class. he and the calculus teacher were buddy buddy... anyway. one day someone asked him about his proof that .9999repeating is the same as 1. the proof goes like this

1 divided by 3 is .33333 repeating. that means one third (espressed as a fraction) is the same as the decimal .333 repeating. if you multiply both sides of hte equation by 3 it says: 1 is equal to .9999 repeating.

i argued that that is flawed. i said that there is a difference betweeen 1 and .999 etc. this difference could be expressed as infinitescimal- like .000(repeating)1 or 1 over infinity.
the teacher said you can't put infinity in the denominator. i said thatwas silly. it's a concept, nto a number, i'm expressing an idea, not a factual thing. it's no less impossible than the infinity itself. that the decimal expression for 1 is 1 or 1.0000000000000 depending on how theoretical or closely measured your numbers would be. so .9999999999999 is obviously something different. he said the proof stood on it's own merits.. and that settled the matter....

naturally i was not pleased. one of my classmates got on the bandwagon wiht him and said i must be wrong because you can't put infinity in the denominator. i said that was ridiculous. again. anyway.. .. i just dropped it for then... feeling humiliated and unlistened to. to this day no one has presented compelling evidence that he was right. but i probably am so bull-headed that i can't be convinced.. after this much time being irritated with that argument in class. i think it's been like 9 years.. spring of 1996 i think. hmm.. i suppose i need to let it go. i just hate that every once in awhile i remember it and i'm pissed off again.