Category Archives: memories

Why You Should Ask Stupid Questions: How to Look and Act Like the Smartest Person in the Room

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I’ve got a little story for you, so sit right down and make yourself comfortable.

A while back, I worked as a software developer for a fairly small but very profitable company. The owner of the company is one of those geniuses. He was interested in computers back when desktop computers first became available. He started playing with the idea that they could be used to do statistics and mathematics. Eventually the program he wrote to do that was paying his bills. In the present, that software package has since likely made him many millions of dollars. At a guess? Tens of millions of dollars.

I remember one day, we were sitting in a meeting discussing the future of documentation for this product. Our documentation was (at the time) printed in the dead tree edition: a set of about 12 books or manuals. Online documentation, it was becoming clear, was the way things would be in the future. And the standard way to do documents like that is PDFs.

At some point in the conversation, my boss, the genius, the owner of the company, the man who had been in computing since desktop computers first became available, spit out the question, “What does PDF stand for?”

PDF, very simply, stands for Portable Document Format.

It might not strike you, Dear Reader, that this is a stupid question, but at that time in that context, PDFs had been around for a decade or so. Surely, anyone who was anyone in commercial software development would know what this is. Especially someone who had seen these evolve over the past decade. For goodness sake, he had been into computers when the first PCs came out! How could he not know what PDFs are?

Apparently he didn’t know what PDF meant.

I sat there in my chair thinking, very rudely, to myself, “That is the stupidest damn question I have ever heard in my entire life.”

You know what happened next?

Someone, maybe even me, answered him. I don’t remember who.

The conversation continued as if nothing unusual had happened.

No one ever mentioned it to him again. I certainly didn’t let loose with my opinion.

But I was keen to observe and think about the dynamic of what I had just seen.

I came to a few conclusions.

  1. If you are the smartest person in the room, you can ask whatever stupid question you want, and someone will give you an answer.
  2. So rather than worrying about whether or not a question is stupid, maybe you should act like you are the smartest person in the room, and just ask it.

I’ve put this into practice. If I have a question, even if I have that little nagging doubt in my mind about whether it is a stupid question, I ask it. What have I found out from this?

  1. Almost always, others have the same questions that I do.
  2. I get more respect from asking questions than I do from keeping silent.
  3. People tend to think I’m smarter when I ask questions than when I don’t.

Dear Reader, I conclude with my advice to you. Act like the smartest person in the room. Have courage, and ask your stupid questions.

Cookies

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One of my REU students made cookies and gave some to one of her research mentors. It is really nice to do something for someone because you enjoy doing it and because you want to make them smile, just for a moment.

There was a time when I made cookies; for Valentine’s Day, and other holidays. I’d put them in decorated bags, and I’d leave them for my faculty members and friends in graduate school. I loved doing it. The work itself gave me pleasure. The anticipation, because I wanted them to come in that morning and smile because someone was thinking of them. I wanted to give them that moment with a smile.

Like I smiled when one of my young friends left me some cookies this past Christmas.

There were tears in my eyes then too.

At some point I stopped making cookies. I remember the conversation. One of my faculty members told me that she knew why I needed to do that. Really? I’m not sure exactly what she said after that. It was just the smug certainty, not gratitude, but superiority, that me making her cookies represented weakness in me, not kindness toward her. That I needed to do this for her, for them, because I was … something less than the rest of them. Something she could, so easily, see through.

I was hurt. A whole lot angry. How dare anyone presume to think they know what is in my head? How dare anyone take my kindness and turn it into a weakness?

All I have to say to a world that might treat these young ladies that way is so rude that I don’t even want to type it here. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare ever take that precious kind spirit and try to hurt them with it.

Sometimes you have to stop making cookies for people who treat your kindness with contempt. That is right and sad.

The proper response is thank you. And, to these cookie-making friends, I want to say thank you. For the kindnesses toward me and toward others. For reminding me of who I used to be and allowing me to remember this for what it was, through older eyes.

Home

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It’s weird to be back in my hometown. This is home; it feels like home, but it was more than half my life ago that it was home. And it’s changed, not that I remember clearly what it was like before! The streets feel right and the houses look right (so pretty, so pretty), and there are sidewalks everywhere. I’d hardly need my car if I was close to work. At least not at this time of the year.

I miss it, and it isn’t mine any more. Hasn’t been for a long time. Deja-new? Something like that.

I visited Dad in the nursing home four days straight; today I took off to be a tourist. I went to downtown Chicago for an architecture tour and a visit to the Art Institute. Dad would have enjoyed the architecture tour. If only the logistics of dealing with someone who is infirm and so very low on energy weren’t so overwhelming.

This was Dad's favorite place to eat downtown. I wished that he could join me on the Architecture tour today.

This was Dad’s favorite place to eat downtown. I wished that he could join me on the Architecture tour today.

A bat hanging out on the Rookery buidling.

A bat hanging out on the Rookery buidling.

Street name detail on the Rookery building.

Street name detail on the Rookery building.

The Green line train rolls into the station.

The Green line train rolls into the station.

Mother’s Day

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My Grandmother died right before Mother’s Day. I had planned a trip out so I could see her for the holiday. I was busy. I didn’t call to let her know. And the next thing I knew, she died. She lived a long life, over 100 years. I made two trips out on two consecutive weekends. One for the funeral. One for the trip I’d planned, though I didn’t get to visit her.

My mother is a more complicated story. If you have or had a good relationship with your Mom, please don’t take me or mine as any sort of commentary your experiences.

My story is different. It was hard to love my mother. I didn’t know she was an alcoholic until I was in my mid-to-late teens. I just knew she was difficult, prone to rages, generally unhappy. That weird things would happen and that we wouldn’t talk about them. That I, somehow, was often the crux of her discontent. After I left, it was my father. It wasn’t until we both left that my younger brother, the golden child, got a larger fraction of the experience; Dad claimed my younger brother hadn’t seen Mom in several years when she died. I know I hadn’t.

I think she needed a needy child, and I just wasn’t. Not that I think my Mom would have been good with a needy child. Not that, in all honesty, looking back, that she was much good for anyone during the time I remember. I wonder if she ever was a good friend, or a good employee, or a good teacher … because none of that is what I remember.

The good things: she could cook, and I enjoyed eating her food, but I also remember the unholy wars that would be fought over dinner time. She took us to all the different parks in the area. The Lion Park. The Turtle Park. They all had names, we’d go to one maybe once a week. Maybe more, when you are that little, it all blends together. I remember her taking us out to family swim at the pool every weekday morning, and meeting my cousins there. Yes, in writing this, I feel she is damned by faint praise; it is all I’ve got.

I never understood all the poison in her, the near-complete inability to function in a healthy manner. It was years and a gigantic anxiety problem later that I wondered what her demons were like. I’ve seen her ugliness in myself a few times, some recently. I hope I learn from her mistakes, so that as I battle my own demons, that they don’t suck the good out of me, like they did to her.

I realize every once in a while how much those early years mold you. You spend years trying to understand, trying to get it, and on some level you do. But there are boundaries with people that you just don’t know how to set. After a while, they are more internal than external; detachment is difficult. You realize how much that early parenting affects your whole life.

I have no “Happy Mother’s Day” to offer. Mostly bitter memories with a little bit of sweet, and a backpack full of hard-won wisdom.

Christmas Memories

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Do you have a favorite holiday memory?

When I was little, my mother told me that when Santa visited, all my toys came to life and had a party. On Christmas morning, even the ones we took to bed with us would be all arranged in the living room, around the fireplace and Christmas tree, as if frozen the moment Santa left.

My grandmother had 8 children, and so with all the children and grandchildren, cousins, nieces, nephews, spouses, it was quite a crowd. Family holiday parties were held in a school, and of necessity were pot-luck. Grandma and others worked on making ham or ham and cheese buns for the entire group. Warmed and wrapped in tinfoil. Mom made baked beans. I probably remember the cookies best. That and running around the school halls and gymnasium with my cousins.

My grandmother made 7 layer bars (or were they 6 layer bars?), my all-time favorite Christmas cookie. I sometimes make them for myself now.

I don’t have her recipe, but the internet is the repository of all such knowledge. These would be five-layer bars, unless we count the butter or margarine added to the graham cracker crumbs as one layer. Some recipes call for the addition of butterscotch morsels, which I detest. Peanut butter morsels, on the other hand, are awesome. I use either pecans or walnuts or both. With the peanut butter chips and two types of nuts; I think that counts as 7 layers.