Like Father, Like Son

Thanks to Pop Pop’s work on the blockchain back in 1991, we are in Chicago. He has come to address two fintech classes and a student forum at the University of Chicago Booth Business School. I have come to Chicago to see my grandson Jim. Oh, yes, and to listen to Pop Pop’s lecture.

Few people know about Pop Pop’s patents. He often laughs at the irony of his AP Calculus students discussing bitcoin and cryptocurrency. They do not know that their mild-mannered Math teacher is a superhero in the blockchain world, cited in Satoshi Nakamoto’s seminal 2008 white paper proposing bitcoin. But our son does. Last year he listened to his father speak to the fintech class at NYU Stern School of Business. So when Nathan landed on campus as a first-year MBA student, he created this opportunity for his father.

Pop Pop is a gifted speaker. Explaining blockchains and hash functions to an audience with mixed technical abilities is child’s play for him. He could deftly explain nuclear fusion to my five-year-old granddaughter Adella. He is also captivating: in his lecture, he references modern marriage, indentures, philosopher Immanuel Kant, British essayist Samuel Johnson, nuclear physicist Hans Bethe, writer Mark Twain, mortar firing strategies, the stock exchange in Australia, existentialism and his experiences as a Mormon missionary in Japan. I am in awe. I sit in an inconspicuous corner in the back of the room and wonder, “Is this the man who quietly reads next to me each night?”

When Scott finishes, the students politely applaud. Enthusiastically, I think. But I am not sure until the student sitting next to me leans over and says, “Your husband is a genius.”

And so he is.

This morning, the day after his lecture, I struggle to remind myself of that student’s assessment. This is because Pop Pop appears in Nathan and Justine’s living room with a nickel-sized blob of opaque ointment on his left cheek, which is next to a dangling Band-aid and just below a strip of medical tape. A foam toe pad resides on his shoulder. His clothes are rumpled, his hair disheveled. He looks a tad deranged. He does not look like a genius.

“I think you might need some more Neosporin,” he says to Justine, my daughter-in-law. “Jim and I have used it all.”

“What?” she replies, puzzled.

“WHAT?” I say, exasperated.

The Neosporin is mine. As are the Band-aids, medical tape, and foam pads. All had been neatly packed with a pair of particularly sharp scissors in a small plastic bag, which I thought was in my suitcase. All were necessary to dress my foot recovering from an unfortunate mishap with a Verizon Backup Battery unit that landed on my foot four weeks ago. Obviously Jim had found the bag while playing with Pop Pop.

“Look, Granma, I fixed Pop Pop,” Jim merrily interjects.

“Well,” Scott says, “Jim had the Neosporin and Band-Aids, so I just assumed it was o.k. to use them.”

Today Scott does not sound like a genius.

“Forget about the Band-Aids,” I think. “When is it ever appropriate to hand a three-year-old a tube of antibiotic ointment and scissors?”

But I do not say what I think. Even though I know 9 ½  out of 10 parents across America would agree with me, I know such a conversation would not go well with my husband. He can easily outdebate me. Heck, in a matter of seconds, he could convince me that bandaging wounds is an age-appropriate, critical skill for three-year-olds in the Australian Outback that Jim should also master.

It does not take much effort to imagine how Jim came to find the tools to practice his rudimentary first-aid skills. When I left the basement, Pop Pop had been encouraging Jim as he jumped from our air mattress bed to the couch, over a rather swift river teeming with crocodiles. I should have foreseen that sometime between the fifteenth and twentieth jump Pop Pop would stop thinking like a grandpa and start thinking. Just thinking. Like a genius.

When Pop Pop starts thinking he does not talk, he does not listen, and he cannot hear. I imagine that Pop Pop would not have noticed that after twenty jumps Jim, no longer receiving positive acclamations from Pop Pop,  probably decided to ignore those crocodiles and set out in search of pirate treasure. I also imagine that when Jim saw my unattended suitcase, he probably concluded it was the most likely place to find that treasure. And I imagine that when Jim unzipped my suitcase without the slightest glance or harumph from the thinking Pop Pop, who sat only a few feet away, he interpreted that lack of notice as tacit approval and started searching for that treasure buried in my clothes, and when he found no jewels or coins, Jim undoubtedly decided my bag of Band-aids was his treasure. I also imagine that Scott, in his Zombie-like thinking state, absentmindedly abetted Jim’s adventure as a doctor, cutting the strips of medical tape for Jim, pulling off the backing for the sticky padding, or squeezing that last bit of ointment. And while I can only imagine what Jim was thinking, I have no doubt that Pop Pop was truly and absolutely so preoccupied with his thoughts that he did not see or hear a thing. This I know after thirty-five years of marriage.

So I am not entirely surprised by Jim or Scott. What does surprise me is my son Nathan.  He too was present in that Sub-Saharan tropical rainforest in the basement, albeit studying in the corner at his desk. Yet he too was oblivious. Nathan looks like Scott. He talks like Scott. I always knew he sometimes thinks like Scott. But it had never really occurred to me how precisely his process of his thinking mimicked his father’s.

What then is Jim’s future? I am pretty certain he will learn to think like a genius. The more pressing question is whether Jim, with a father and grandfather who frequently parent by benign neglect, will survive until adulthood?

Years ago, when my son Daniel was becoming aware of how the world works, we received a visit from a friend. In the process of leading a short discussion with my three children, he asked them a question. Anxious to be the one to answer, Daniel ran up to Tony and hoping to be called upon wildly waved his arm in front of Tony’s face. Then he yelled out, “Ooh! ooh! Ask me. Don’t ask Mom. She doesn’t think so good.”

The truth is I think just fine. But I do not think like a genius. Rather my thought process is more hardscrabble. And when it comes to my family, I think like a granny. In the Stornetta family that kind of protective and practical thinking is a very valuable asset, prized far above the most valuable rubies. For while the natural-born geniuses in our family are thinking about the futures of blockchains and bitcoins, we grannies simply keep our babies safe, assuring that at least some of our clan will survive.