Johnny O
As he paced into the classroom he casually mentioned, "Can anyone tell me the existence of anything." Everyone in the class immediately checked their schedules and watches to determine if they were in fact in the right class. I myself spent the awkward moment observing the class's reaction. I guess you could say I've spent most of my life observing. Observing, it turns out to me, was far more interesting than the class, not only that semester but through four long years of college.
His name was John O. Outwater, a distinguished gentleman with a fake British accent that for the most part seemed real. He claimed to hold a doctorate degree in mechanical engineering from legendary Oxford. He was so bold enough to have the framed diploma hanging on his office wall, next to a picture of his wife and daughter, taken with a long range lens, standing next to an abandoned mine shaft. Outwater never fooled me, but he was without a doubt, the greatest influence on me, in my brief, uneventful, college life, and later in my failed career as a mechanical engineer.
His entrance that day made all of the real engineering students nervous and apprehensive. It would be one of many nervous moments for the engineering elite in the many courses and semesters to follow. For me it was more like a wake up call.
I was always entertained by Outwater mistaking the gender of an overzealous student eager to gain brownie points, by turning abruptly from the blackboard and saying, "Yes sir" or "Yes mam" to the answering student, without pause or notice of gender. It was purely a random process at whether mam or sir would be uttered with his dulcid, fake accent, but amazingly he was always able to call the eager male students mam, and the eager women students sir. During a particularly boring period in Statistical Thermodynamics 101, more boring than usual, I attempted to figure the probability of Outwater's perfect record of gender bashing. Taken into account, their were 44 male students and 16 women students, and noting that only 8 male students and 2 women students ever opened they're mouths to ask Outwater anything, his amazing predictability seemed much less amazing to me. None the less, considering there were 14 weeks, 42 classes, in a semester, I never once saw him disappoint the gender bashing fans in the back of the class. It was as if he really did have eyes in the back of his head.
I had worked out an optical theory, in which the bifocal portion of his eyeglasses were really little convex mirrors, which with the proper alignment of either of his eyes, could reflect up to a 10 degree refraction angle of the actual class behind him. The only so called blind spot would be for a direct line behind him. Of course with any movement on his part he could cover that small area of students too. The theory I felt was fool proof, until a smarter student from a prep school in Connecticut, shot a piercing hole in my
theory. He quoted to me a rather obscure equation dating back to Galieo's time, which basically stated that the angle of refraction is logrithmically proportional to the square of the distance from Outwater's eye to the lens at his glasses. Since the distance from Outwater's eye to his glass lens was so short, the angle of refraction was infinitesimally small. I specifically remember him using the word "infinitesimally", as if he were standing here in the room with me, but of course that would be impossible, as I'm sure he has the great misfortune of working as a prominent manufacturing engineer in Toledo, Ohio or some other exotic locale.
To Outwater, I was an insignificant quark, rotating and pulsating my way towards a meaningless degree in the staunch, rigid, academically correct, field of mechanical engineering. He held this view of me until my senior year. With two C's and a D under my belt, compliments of Professor John O. Outwater, I decided it was time to suit up and play a game of my own with the good professor. In the 1983 University Of Vermont Fall Semester course selection book it was called:
"Mechanical Engineering 254-Senior Project"
A required course for all students desiring a degree in
mechanical engineering. A one year independent study
course in which the student will demonstrate his or her
mechanical engineering skills acquired during all
previous semesters. The student, working with a
professor as an advisor, will select a mechanical
engineering project from an approved curriculum list,
and provide research and documentation relating to the
engineering, design, and manufacture of the project.
The student will present his or her results and findings
in a formal presentation to all mechanical engineering
students, faculty, and all engineering department heads
to take place during the spring semester.
3 Credit Hours.........................................
I selected the only project on the list with Outwater as an advisor, without so much as a thought or consideration as to the project itself. I had set the ball rolling, set the wheels in motion, there was no turning back. Since this was a year long project, and with the lottery drawing to determine the actual presentation date, not until the second week into the spring semester, I immediately resolved to do nothing on the project until my presentation date was determined. I mean one could die during the fall semester and forever regret the last hours of life spent working on something as meaningless as a year long project worth a measly 3 credit hours.
With as much anticipation and apprehension as a character in
Shirley Boothe's "The Lottery", I waited for my lucky draw. The majority of students had spent some amount of time on they're projects, and at the very least talked with they're advisors. But me, I opted to live on the edge, and take a chance with blind luck. My devil may care attitude proved correct for the first and only time of my life when the first week of April was selected as my draw. A presentation date during the week after spring break was a very hot commodity. Many a February ticket holder bartered they're wares in my direction for an exchange, but I stood firm, telling them while they've wasted countless hours during the past two semesters, I will not have started my project until the week of spring break. Oh sure, they countered back with, "While you're wasting your spring break I'll be wasted on a sunny beach." It didn't phase me, for life to me, was not only not to have one, but to seek pleasure in knowing this was my true course for the remainder of my life.
The week before spring break I thought I might touch base, so
to speak with my dedicated advisor, Professor Outwater. I
immediately went through my idea of a design for the ultimate
variable camber cross country ski. A ski, which if I did my planning correctly, could be designed, made, and tested, all within a 7 day, 24 hour a day, time period. Outwater scoffed at my idea, claiming it would never work, muttering something under his breath about a zero moment arm. He suggested, his obviously lame idea, of a turn-buckle mounted on the top surface of a ski. With my best cocky, I don't give a shit attitude, I rather casually told him, "You obviously have never raced on cross country skis." A very wide smile
transmogrified itself across his face, a smile that resembled the Grinch's smile after finally finding his heart. He said, "I am quite an adept Nordic skier and am quite aware of not only the mechanical properties of skis, but also the biomechanics required between man and ski." He further added in a rather smug tone, "But please do, be my guest, pursue your idea and prove to me it's validity." At that moment, the only thought exploding in my head was, "Talk about
validity, tell me Johnny-O just how valid is that phony Oxford degree on the wall?" "About as valid as your accent, huh!" And then it occurred to me, like a beam of shining blue, soft, light, annilating these negative thoughts from my mind.
It was September 17, 1981, 10:33 AM, the very first words uttered from Professor John O. Outwater's mouth, "The definition of a good engineer is someone who can convince the most people that he or she knows what they are doing when in fact they do not." This was the sign. This was the major reason I rather casually chose engineering as a degree. I didn't mention Outwater's definition to him that day, or at anytime after that. I said to him, "I was going to build my idea," and walked out of his office, noting as I left that it
really was difficult to determine his wife and daughter from a huge piece of anthracite coal in the famous mine shaft picture. I faintly overheard him saying, "And I want to see test results from your ski." I'd show him the most bogus, made-up, test results he'd ever see. Test results guaranteed to amaze even myself. For it's one thing to make something up to please others, but it really takes a special person who can make things up to please himself.
I started my project two days into the spring break. I gutted out an old ski of mine using a blow torch to melt the plastic and foam core. I inserted two aluminum channel sections attached to a spring steel center section, much like a hinge. Sure it looked cumbersome and ugly, but hell, according to my bogus test results, I amazingly could alter the kick force required to flatten the ski by up to 15 pounds while only adding 250 grams to the weight of the cross
country racing ski. And if that wasn't enough proof, I had brand new shiny overheads in all the colors of the rainbow to dazzle and amaze my fellow mechanical engineering geeks. In all I worked a little under 40 hours on my so called year long project. I had timed my presentation to a perfect 20 minutes with 5 minutes left to handle the multitude of questions worthy of such an interesting, complex, and invaluable project such as this.
With my presentation just 30 minutes away, I downed a beer and attempted to tie a tie around my neck. Yes, it was the first of 10 times I would attire myself in the dreaded fabric harness, the white-collar working man's ball and chain. It took 25 minutes to achieve a knot more resembling a bulbous wart on a diseased elm than a neat, uniform, Windsor knot worthy of a clean-cut future engineer.
Using my glossy, colorful, overheads, I spent nearly 15 minutes explaining how ski wax and snow crystals interact, not only on a molecular level, but on a spiritual, metaphysical, level. Using quotes from the legendary great, Snowflake Bentley, who categorized millions of the geometric intricacies of snowflakes, I lulled the students, faculty, and nearly every inanimate object in the lecture hall into a state very nearly approaching "absolute zero", a state where all molecular activity ceases.
Having the audience exactly where I wanted them, I then spent the last 5 minutes hurriedly explaining my bogus equations supporting my design, and my fabricated test results that proved my ski would not only change the entire cross country ski industry as we knew it, but could possibly effect the very way man transports himself in the entire northern latitudes. Whipping the last 25 colorful overheads off the projector faster than the human eye could scan, I could only
imagine that each and every living organism in the room experienced something approaching the old color wheel test, where if a wheel containing all the primary colors is spun fast enough, all the colors blend to a striking, blinding, white. I achieved total mesmerization in a mere 20 minutes. The only student, faculty member, or inanimate object, in the room with enough molecular activity going on to bother with the question/answer session was my former girlfriend, who was on the college ski team, the U.S. ski team, and coincidentally enough, just happened to be doing the same senior project as myself. With her hand fully extended and
waving in a full 180 degree motion, I could not postpone the rather obvious ignoring act I was so adeptly performing any longer than the one and a half minutes I had already done. I sarcastically replied, "Yes, you have a question!" At which, the brown-nosing bitch, who was merely copying Outwater's suggested turn-buckle idea, asked some lame question regarding my fabricated test results. I didn't bother to listen to her question, for my mind was busy plotting my
revenge for her presentation two weeks from then. I merely shrugged the question off, saying, "You obviously were not paying attention to the details of my presentation, any other questions? Any questions at all? Thank you!" With the lecture hall masses still in a state near "absolute zero", there were no further questions, and my 40 hours of work was completed.
The grade was immaterial. In fact I was mortally disappointed when I received a C instead of a D. By Outwater's definition of an engineer, what I had achieved could not be measured by some arbitrary, academic, nonsensical letter. No, what I had done made me more of an engineer than all the A students combined in Mechanical Engineering 254. I had not only convinced all of the students, not including my former girlfriend, for can we really count her?, for human emotions and womanly scorn run much deeper than the logical world of engineering, 7 professors (one who went out of his way to commend me on the most interesting project presentation to date. So what if he left the University the following semester to join the Yananamo tribe in South America.), the dean of mechanical engineering, 250 molded polystyrene/fiberglass modular desks, 4 acoustically treated fabric draped walls, one acoustical tile ceiling, one linoleum tile floor (pattern of symmetrical, geometric, lines and concentric circles obviously selected by either an anal retentive interior designer or an engineer on the faculty), and a blackboard, so used to it's surface being etched with meaningless, complex second order differential equations and derivations, that for once the subject was interesting enough to include a tangible, real life subject matter, the snowflake. No, I had done something even greater than convincing, I had actually changed the state of they're molecular level. While on the surface, changing someone's molecular level may seem like an unreal, god-like, ability to have, but it really doesn't take much effort to reduce the molecular level of engineers to "absolute zero". I mean they're almost there in they're natural state.
Be that as it may, I never, directly, talked or heard from John O. Outwater again, after that immortal first week of April. I did manage to talk with my former girlfriend, who smugly told me she had received a B on her project despite the nearly 3 minutes of Mike Wallace like questioning from yours truly. She also mentioned that Outwater had told her, "You really have to admire Matt for getting up in front of the entire faculty and students and lying through his teeth,
on an idea that not only wouldn't work, but in all probability would damage ski and skier alike." It was those words that truly made a great impression on me. Outwater didn't need to tell me directly, in fact, his fake British accent would have tarnished the very sentiment the words conveyed. I guess it's true when they say, "You never
can really understand those that are most like you." For Outwater and his fake accent, which only I seemed to realize was fake, was practicing what he preached, in his own, small obscure way.
