{"id":2568,"date":"2022-02-18T14:08:39","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T22:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/?p=2568"},"modified":"2022-02-18T14:47:05","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T22:47:05","slug":"the-smartest-man-in-the-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/the-smartest-man-in-the-room\/","title":{"rendered":"The Smartest Man In The Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friends,<\/p>\n

My Dad passed away<\/a> the other day. He hasn’t enjoyed anything resembling good health for years so we weren’t taken by surprise. My family has assumed that every fall, every diagnosis, would be the “precipitating event” for longer than I can remember. It turns out there wasn’t one.<\/p>\n

More Than One Math<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dad had a remarkable memory and ability to perform complex calculations in his head. You could tell that he was working on something by the slight head tilt and swivel up 10° and 7° to the right. Right eye in a squint, then he’d turn back to you and share the answer. <\/p>\n

He did this to calculate the length of conduit to buy for a certain sized pool, a certain distance from its equipment. He did this to check a server’s math after receiving the check at a restaurant after memorizing the price of every plate ordered. He could tell you to a precision of a half hour how long it would take to fill that pool based on its volume and the flow rate from a garden hose.<\/p>\n

I like to think that he enjoyed finding order in chaos. Lots of things are knowable, and understandable, if you think about them hard enough.<\/p>\n

A Casual Relationship With The Manual<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"MG<\/p>\n

The skill I gained from him instead of his innate grasp of the mathematical world, was his desire to know how things work. No instructions? Not a problem, just take it apart and figure it out. Listen to experts. Pay attention to advice, then trust your instincts. And know when you’re in over your head.<\/p>\n

This works great for mechanical things. Most things built by people can be taken apart. Systems can be understood.<\/p>\n

However, Dad had very little time for instruction manuals or service guides. If he didn’t need a specific value, like a spark plug gap or what that flashing light means, he could usually figure it out on his own. He didn’t care for code readers and had no patience for the Internet. Too much chaff, not enough grain.<\/p>\n

Precious Gifts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

He wanted to make sure that I got to see The Ernie Kovacs Show<\/a> when I was a kid and to understand why it was funny. It’s the only television I can think of that made him laugh out loud.<\/p>\n

Above all, and I spent a lot of time on this in his obituary,<\/a> he was kind and generous. Maybe a little too trusting of door-to-door salesmen, but it seemed like his default position was that everyone is inherently good until they prove otherwise.<\/p>\n

A pretty good example to set, I think.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

I miss him.<\/p>\n

Your pal,<\/p>\n

– bob<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friends, My Dad passed away the other day. He hasn’t enjoyed anything resembling good health for years so we weren’t taken by surprise. My family has assumed that every fall, every diagnosis, would be the “precipitating event” for longer than I can remember. It turns out there wasn’t one. More Than One Math Dad had … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Smartest Man In The Room”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photos","category-this-crappy-year"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/IMG_2381.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2568"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2571,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2568\/revisions\/2571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}