Bob Stevens 1935 - 2019

On September 24, we lost a wonderful man who was known to RCTonline readers as the Muddled Male and to those in Rich County as a man who gave quiet service in the church and community and who made everyone feel loved and appreciated.  He was beloved.  Bob Stevens' formal obituary will be available on October 8, but we thought we'd reprise one of our favorite columns.  This made me laugh and then made tears come to my eyes as I will miss him with everyone else in town.

The Gaunlet Thrown

By Bob Stevens, The Muddled Male

        It is one thing to be outed.  It is another to be outed by a friend.  When I first began reading last week’s Unmuddled Mathematician I assumed that the entire article would be a safe discussion of the Levi pants dress-code of our era, a subject with which I am quite familiar.  Granted I am of a much earlier era than my friend the professor, but at the school where I attended, and the era during which I attended, Levi pants where the required dress code of every boy in the entire school.  The professor also remembered correctly that the pant cuffs had to be rolled up, two rolls as I remember, so that the inner color would show as a light colored stripe at the bottom of each leg to contrast with the natural dark blue color of the outside of the jeans.  It was important, though that the stitching along the bottom of each pant leg was hidden, thus the requirement for two rolls in each cuff.  Moreover, we did not wear baggy jeans.  And we didn’t even know what skinny jeans were, having never even heard the word.  In the vernacular of Goldilocks, our jeans had to be neither too baggy nor too skinny; but just right.  A very important requirement was that once such a pair of jeans was purchased it was verboten to wash them.  While the youth of this day pay big bucks to buy their jeans pre-faded and pre-torn, ours could never show any signs of fading and/or wear, or we would have to abandon them for a new pair.  When our jeans became either faded or worn we gave them to our mother so that she could tear them into strips and crochet them into a rug.  Most important of all we had to guard the little red “Levi” tag, located in the stitching of our right back pocket.  If one of our miserable buddies snuck up behind and ripped the Levi tag off, we were automatically branded a dodo for life. 

        The professor’s talk about Levis was great, and I settled in for a fun read, until he shifted to talking about the new iPhone 6-plus and my intent to own one, thus outing me to Ann my wife while I was still in the process of denying that I had ever given any thought to such a purchase, while at the same time I was secretly trying to manipulate Ann into saying, ”Dear, I think you should buy yourself an iPhone 6-plus.  You really deserve one and I love to see you happy.”  So now my plan has been thwarted and Ann may never trust me again.  And so for having been outed, and because I consider myself to have been besmirched by my friend the professor, I have picked up the gauntlet he so heartlessly flung before me, and I am sharing with you, the reader, this rare glimpse into the differing worlds of an engineer and a math person. 

        First.  A math person would research the dimensions of phones equivalent in size to the iPhone 6-plus and then compare those dimensions to the size of the pants pockets with which he is familiar and calculate that the pockets will have to be increased in size for there to be any chance of the phone fitting the pocket.  An engineer, on the other hand, would build a model of the phone and then test the actual pants which he will be wearing, thus knowing the actual fit instead of assuming a fit based on a few numbers.  To demonstrate, I first built a cardboard model using the exact dimensions of an iPhone 6-plus.  I have included two pictures to demonstrate.  The first shows the phone-model being inserted into the side pocket of my pants.  The second photo shows the phone inserted all the way into the side pocket.  In the interest of full disclosure, my pants are Carharts, also known as pants for a real man.  It is obvious from this simple demonstration that I will not have to wait for the Levi retrofit jeans. 

        Second.  My friend the professor put together a model of what he referred to as a “must have” accessory for my new iPhone 6-plus, assuming that Ann ever lets me have one now that my friend the professor narc’d on me.  You will notice from the Unmuddled Mathematician’s photo that it is only a concept model which is held together with an assortment of every clamp he had in his garage, and it needs a lot of work by an engineer before it could ever be ready for use.  It looks, in fact, like the mathematical equation that my friend the math professor probably used to determine the configuration.  You remember such an equation from the interaction that you had with your own math professor as you struggled to avoid being flunked out of college. 

I suspect that your professor, like mine, would write an equation on the chalk board that contained everything in his symbol dictionary.  Like integrals and derivatives, curved brackets and square brackets, square root signs and power signs, function signs and imaginary number signs, and on and on.  When you asked him to explain it he likely countered with, “Well, I am going to leave this as an exercise for the student, and it is due first thing in the morning.”  And there you are.  Left to struggle on your own with an undecipherable set of hieroglyphics that needed to be solved before the sun rises the next morning. 

Luckily you now have an engineer to turn the undecipherable equation of the mathematician into a decipherable model for you to feel, test, and try out.  I have included a picture of the working prototype I created to elucidate your understanding of my friend the professor’s model.  You will also notice that the engineer’s prototype, unlike the mathematician’s model, provides all three elements of form, fit, and function needed to evaluate the usefulness of the device.  Please notice that the iPhone 6-plus nestles securely inside the holder and is protected completely with the lid closed, even if you sit on it.  Notice the industrial strength hinge that allows the lid to be opened to allow you to remove your iPhone 6-plus for use.  Notice the high strength fasteners I used in place of the mathematician’s clamps to hold everything together.  Notice also that I have used the finest piece of oak scrap I could find in my garage, meaning that you will only have to wear a two pound weight as a counter balance instead of ten pounds needed with my friend the professor’s model.  Finally, I have added a pencil holder especially for use by math professors during those times when they forget how to work their smart phone and need to write something down. 

        Now to my friend the professor, your move.  And to Ann, my wife, I am willing to forgo my purchase plans and suffer the rest of my life if that is what you want.  Unless, of course, you really want me to upgrade to an iPhone 6-plus and be the person I was meant to be.  In the meantime you will find me groveling at my computer.