An older gentleman, grey-white thinning hair, gold-rimmed aviator bifocals, white oxford shirt with a blood red power tie tucked under the third button, hails for my attention. "Excuse me, I noticed that you have an Apple." His voice is matter of fact, I can feel the sternness in it; this is an authority figure. His legs are slightly more than a shoulder's width apart and his hand rests on his hip crushing a newspaper. He is fit despite his age, maybe sixty or sixty-five, an intellectual tiger and an athlete.
"Yes.." I say hesitantly and as politely as I can having been taken off-guard.
"If a magic fairy came down and gave you a choice between a brand new Apple laptop and a Hewlett-Packard (or a Dell), which one would you choose?"
"Well," I said slowly as I found the politically correct way to say that I'm an Apple nut and they will have to pry it from my cold dead hands, "I would choose the Apple."
"And what is it about the Apple that you like?"
"Well, for me, at least, I mean for my thought process, Apple is more comfortable." He doesn't react, so I continue in my normal disconnected elusive half-stuttering way, "I used to use Windows at work... when I was doing IT administration, and nothing really felt... comfortable to me. You know, the way things were designed to work and the way that I thought about doing them didn't seem to agree."
Blank-faced, "Well, I don't have a thought process on the computer and I hate those bastard Microsoft engineers.... are you dyslexic?"
"Um.... no, I don't think so, not really anyway, at least it has never been diagnosed."
"See, all the millionaires I know are dyslexic screw balls, real eccentrics... and it seems that it takes that kind of person to out think the norm." At this point, I'm not sure what to say. How does one respond to that? He repeats his question as if I hadn't answered, probably sensing the uncertainty in my response, "Are you dyslexic?"
"Well, no, I'm not really dyslexic. I mean I had trouble as a child telling the difference between 'b' and 'p' and 'd' and 'q', but I wasn't diagnosed... I mean I feel normal now, but I don't think like everyone else, you might say that I'm an odd ball. I'm an artistic creative type, and I think differently."
"I'll tell you, I've run a clinic for 20 years. We had Macintosh in the beginning and I was happy with it, it was perfect and everything worked. Then these IBM types came along and switched the whole clinic over to PCs. I've spent the last 4 years in discomfort." A half second pause, "I'll tell you a story, since I interrupted you.
I have a couple millionaire friends, and a few billionaire friends and every damn one of them is a screw-ball. My good friend Rolla, he was a multi-billionaire. When he was a baby, he tripped and fell down the stairs and lost his sight. About the time he was six, his Mom kicked him out of the house. She said, 'You're not going to get your vision back, so you're going to have to learn to live with it', she sent him off to a special school for the blind in a nearby town in Kansas - and told him he'd have to find his own transportation there and back and that if he couldn't do anything else, he could at least learn to make baskets. Well, he did. He found a ride back and forth. One cold winter day, his ride didn't show up. He waited on the steps for him for a while, but it was cold. He waited in the car for awhile, but it was cold. He finally ended up inside a building at the Chiropractic college next door. While he waited, he made the fortunate mistake of mentioning to a Chiropractic student that his neck had hurt ever since his accident. You know how it is with Chiropractors, as soon as you say you've got a pain, they've got you in an ankle lock, dragging you into treatment." He gestures with his hands making the shape of the lock, "Well, after a few adjustments, Rolla got his sight back. Not all of it, and not very good either, but enough to be able to read, get his flying license, driver's license, and make millions selling airplanes. Rolla died a couple of months back, and his millionaire cousin and hang-out buddy was telling everyone at the funeral about Rolla. We all wondered how he managed to get his driver's license, let alone a pilot's license, because he was a God-awful driver. His cousin knew the secret. Rolla had memorized the order of every eye chart on the market. He could see well enough to see the second row, which let him know which chart it was... there are only six charts in existence. Not many people would think to find out how many eye charts there are and to memorize them. Isn't that something?"
"Wow...", I'm stunned. It isn't everyday that you hear such personal tales of nearly-blind millionaires.
"Well, I'll leave you be now, enough of me interrupting you." Then as quickly as he came, the old doctor had gone, leaving me with my thoughts.
Now, back to my thesis proposal.
