Crossposting from Other Sources

[rorqual]

I haven't posted much recently; no particular reason.  However, I feel a bit like an absentee blogger, so I though I'd pull something else I wrote and put it up here.  I (like most of America) participate in a football pool during the season; not for money (because that would be Wrong, and also because when we started it most of us did not have any), but for pride.  Typically, the winner every week gets to Command the others to do something; often, it's writing something about football, but sometimes it's on other topics.  During the past year, one of the winners commanded us to spend time with our families, or to say something about our families (or, alternatively, to write about why the Cowboys suck).  So, I wrote about my dad.  A couple people said nice things about it, so I report it here for the Internet's amusement.  It's this, or liveblogging the Oscars, people, and nobody wants that.

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Since I can't spend time with my Dad, I will tell y'all a story about him which represents very much the kind of guy he was.  When I was in 5th Grade, I had a science teacher I totally loved.  I mean, I thought she was beautiful, brilliant, and awesome - I loved her in way which only a ten-year-old kid can crush out on someone.

Every day I would come home from school and tell my parents about everything I learned in school (because we were that kind of family), and one day, I came home and told my dad about the things we had learned that day about electricity - specifically, series and parallel circuits.  Now, my dad was an electrical engineer - not in a degree-holding kind of way, but in a practical, hands-on, building-stuff kind of way, and he certainly knew his circuitry (and honestly, it's not complicated - series circuits are in a row, and parallel ones run side by side, as you'd expect).

So, I tell my dad about what I learned in school that day, about how my wonderful teacher taught me about how these circuits run, and he promptly broke my wee little heart by telling me she was wrong - she'd gotten them switched around.  I insisted that of course she was right, she was the teacher, and he must be wrong, she could never be wrong! I was totally outraged.

Well, the next day, he drove me to school, and went in to see the teacher - much to my dismay.  And, nicely and clearly, he explained to her that she'd gotten it backwards, and showed her the right stuff, and explained the difference.  And she, being a 4th and 5th Grade science teacher who was basically teaching all kinds of science out of a textbook, was actually pretty happy to have someone share some helpful information - and that day in class, she taught it again, the right way, citing my dad in the process.

That taught me a few good lessons, which I think he always lived by, and wanted me to do so as well:

1 - If you're right, you're right, no matter what the Authority says.
2 - If you hear something that's wrong - just wrong - you shouldn't sit by and keep your mouth shut about it, if you can help.
3 - You can correct someone in such a way that they learn something, and are happy to do so.  No need to be a jerk.

So there you go, Internets.  If you wanna see the slide rule I inherited from him, y'all come on by...:)