Asl dumb questions, get smart answers

I think of my ninth-grade substitute teacher in algebra when I have to write about something I don’t understand.

She admitted she couldn’t fathom the depths of this incomprehensible subject when she came to us in an emergency. She spent that night poring over algebra textbooks trying to come up with a lesson that wouldn’t make her look like a fool.

The next day, she shared with us what she had learned, and it was crystal clear. She had started at our level of understanding and learned along with us. I wasn’t very good at algebra, but I sure got this lesson.

I have prided myself with doing my best work on things I know absolutely nothing about. Biotechnology, supercomputers, high finance — you name it. I dig in and am forced to ask stupid questions.

I remember asking a governor of the Federal Reserve Board: “So why does the Fed need to control interest rates at all?” Nobody had ever asked him that before, apparently. I got a solid, quotable answer (but I don’t remember what he said.)

When Sen. Barry Goldwater made a snide remark about Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, I asked ignorantly, “What do you have against McNamara?” He responded. “McNamara is an (expletive).” Great quote.

I remember trying to find out how consumers could use some exotic new Silicon Valley invention. An executive there didn’t like my question. “You don’t know what you are talking about,” he said and then hung up. Bet they went out of business in a hurry.

But sometimes I knew too much. I wrote a kind story about my great aunt’s 105th birthday and dutifully sent it in to the Oakland Tribune. The paper treated it as a press release and sent someone to write their own story. The reporter focused on her love of wrestling on TV. “But not women wrestlers,” she said. “It’s not lady-like.” I guess I knew she watched wrestling, but I never would have thought to write about it.

Speaking of substitute teachers, I have admired people who can step in at the last minute to explain a variety of subjects. Students do feel like they have the day off, and I can remember everybody in class going up to the pencil sharpener at the same time as kind of a prank.

But there are gems. I never liked my fifth grade teacher, who had back trouble and was grumpy all the time. We were always delighted when she was home sick because her substitute would read wonderful stories to us. The regular teacher was so ill that the substitute got all the way through Paul Bunyan in one year. I don’t remember the class work, but I remember Paul Bunyan.