E is for Education

PT’s 91 Years of Wisdom

This year, I had a terrible time trying to figure out what my A-Z theme would be.  I finally decided that this year, I would honor my beloved 91 year old grandfather, Paul Titus, or PT as his friends called him, who passed away on February 8th.  He lived a wonderfully full life and was always trying to challenge my brothers and me to think out of the box.  So for this challenge I thought I would share little bits of his wisdom that he tried to bestow upon us.  

But I also want to highlight the wonderful bloggers in this community who have published their books.  So everyday, I will give a quick  shout out to those works with titles beginning with the letter of the day.  

My son showing Gramps how to navigate on his new computer 

Gramps never went to college.  He and my grandma got married right out of highschool, but being educated was extremely important to him.  He was always thinking about something and often said, “I’m never bored, there’s too much to think about.”

I remember when my brother and I would join he and my Grandma on their yearly drive to Florida, all the way down Gramps would ask us questions like, “How many gallons of water do you think are in the lake?” He would proceed to tell us the circumference  and it’s approximate depth, so we could figure it out.  One time he asked, “How many trees do you think are in that forest over there?” Of course we could only estimate depending on a number of variables, but he kept us thinking.  

Maybe it was his way of making sure my brother and I didn’t annoy each other in the car in the days before ipads/ipods, portable game systems, and seatbelts!  But it opened my eyes to the reality that math is all around us and there are always opportunities to ponder things.        

 
He was always asking questions wanting to learn new things.  And when he finally learned about Google, he was unbelievably excited.  He couldn’t imagine a world where questions could be answered with a few keystrokes instead of looking up information in a dated old encyclopedia.  Whenever we saw him he would ask us stuff to look up.  We finally told him, he should just get his own computer and look up whatever he wanted.  He protested saying he would never know what to do with it.  But when he was 90, he decided it was time to join the computer age and he bought a small laptop.  He loved it.  


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Now for the "E" title shout outs!

Roland Yeomans

Ciara Knight

Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi 

Make sure to check out all the other great A-Zers here and have an excellent "E" day!

Kathy :)