There are engineers and there are engineers. One group are the sort that thought it would be cool to be an engineer. The other are the true engineers - the ones that personify all the engineer stereotypes. I should know. My brother is an engineer, my cousin is an engineer, and the rest of the family is painted with great big engineering strokes. There's a reason my toolbox puts all my male friends to shame and I can't lift it.
Asking my father any question about how something worked generally meant that a pad of paper and a pen would be brought out as sketches of the inner workings of something would be explained. Any explanation was thorough and in detail. It became the way you expected things to be explained.
I'm in the market for a bike. I don't know much about bikes but I know enough about mechanical things to know that you need to know about them to make an informed purchase. I started canvasing my friends. What do you know about bikes? One of my friends knew about bikes. His e-mails detailing what I needed to look for were thorough and detailed. He graciously agreed to come with me on a bike shopping expedition.
I learned more about bikes then I thought there was to know. I had only recently learned that one could get different sorts of bikes. All of a sudden I was learning why the various types of bikes were made differently. It was about your centre of gravity, where the pivot point on the wheel for the steering was, how much clearance was needed for the different tires and dirt, why you might need disk brakes, the difference between spring and air shocks, the frame set-up, the welding of the joints, the placement of the handle bars, the treads of the tire . . . then in the middle of explaining the difference in the diameter of the wheels, he paused and looked slightly embarrassed.
"I'm sorry. This is rather a technical engineering explanation . I don't want to overwhelm you with details."
I gave him a big smile, "Don't worry. My brother's an engineer."
If I'm not overwhelmed with information, then I don't feel that I've had a proper explanation. I'm used to being taken out of my depth. You discover that when you try to put your feet down, you don't drown. You understand what they're talking about. I was back in an environment that I understood.
"Why does the diameter matter?"
He immediately launched back into the technical explanation. I'm pretty sure if the tires hadn't been right there, he would have whipped out a pad and pencil and started drawing.
He was thorough and went into detail.
He's a true engineer.
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