.....and other random stuff......

Friday, June 3, 2011

My Father Was a Genius

Seriously, he was a genius. His IQ was off the charts. He was a member of Mensa.

He could do math IN HIS HEAD! No paper, no pencil, IN HIS HEAD!

My mother would be balancing the checkbook, legal pad in hand, she would write down the amounts as she called them out to my father.

By the time she got to the bottom of the page and drew the line to total the column, my father had the answer.

He was ALWAYS RIGHT.

I, on the other hand, am math impaired.

I took Algebra in high school three years running, and only passed out of pity. I wanted to drop it but wasn’t allowed.

My father lectured on the necessity of math skills till my brother’s and my ears bled. (I may exaggerate, but only slightly!)

I tried to explain to him that I would never need to know algebra in my adult life. He disagreed.

A few years out of high school on a plane trip to Florida with my parents, the pilot decided to break our boredom with a little contest.

Anyone who could calculate the exact midpoint of our flying time accurately would win a bottle of champagne!

My father pulled out his ever present legal pad, and commenced to long involved algebraic calculations, filling  the page.

I took out a note pad and divided our estimated arrival time in half.

When the Captain announced that I’d won the bottle of champagne, I turned to my father and said; “See, I told you I didn’t need to learn Algebra!”

Sweet vindication!

1 comment:

  1. Aagh, that Blogger! It just ate my comment not letting me sign in again.

    I was just going to tell you dads can sure be this way. My granddaughter was doing some math problems (just for fun - a puzzle) and was having a hard time coming up with an answer so her dad decided to work on it himself and broke it all down into a convoluted set of steps. Well, my granddaughter came up with the answer before he did and he was upset because she couldn't tell him all the steps she'd taken to get there. He told her she just guessed but she didn't. She worked it around in her head writing something down occasionally and came to her conclusion. It wasn't a problem you could just guess at!

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