My Pa Is Smarter Than Your Dad!

It’s true.  How many of you can say that your dad made his own hifi-amplifier (high-fidelity) including acid etching the board, wire wrapping, case design, wooden body, front panel design, selection of knobs, flip switches, masking of front panel label, lacquering and final touch up?  Not to mention all the assembly, soldering, and testing.  None?  I thought so. 😛

Oh, and did I mention that he also made from scratch the two multi-cone speakers, each with a bass-woofer cone, (one or two) mid-range cone, and one high-range twitter cone (not that twitter.com twitter!)?  Oh ya, he had them as well.  Including the wooden frame that he sketched, designed and got them cut to size in a factory, which he assembled together, fitted in the yellow noise absorption foam stuffs, and lacquered the whole thing to a perfect finishing.

The wooden diamond pattern gauze cover over the speaker had a brush with me.  I managed to clip one or two off when I played “smash myself into anything like I am driving a car” while I was a kid.  Of course that also got me more than a cursory slap on the wrist.

While all of the above are true, I don’t quite recall myself going around in school trumpeting to my friends about how “My pa is smarter than your dad!”.  Perhaps it was because I just took it for granted that he was able to do that.  It didn’t occur to me that most people’s pa cannot barely tell the difference between a diode and a resistor, much less do anything close to what my pa did.  And so in the past when I watch some movies, in particular, American movies, I was rather amused to see the little kids bickering over whose dad was better.  In fact I don’t recall any of my peers ever getting into this type of
juvenile antics.  Perhaps we were a matured bunch?

Now what if I tell you that all the above about my pa was just something that I think up?  (For the records, it is true and I’ll post the photos as proof! :p … you are also welcomed to visit their humble abode to witness first hand, what real hifi is about! hehe).  What if out of admiration of my pa and perhaps out of pride, I was led to think that he was able to do all that when in fact he could not.  Some kids are known to be self-deluded or confused.  They genuinely believe that their pa is ze greatest and can do everything, including giving birth to kids! :p

What if they start going around criticising other kids’ father or even mother?  Most would just dismiss it as kiddish.  What if they go to play at the neighbours’ place and then ridicule the kid’s parents, deriding them as useless, while trumpeting their father as the greatest?  Or what if they even claim that the neighbour’s house was bought or built by their father.  As you can see, if this persist, this can get quite annoying.

Now, what if the kid then suggest to the neighbour’s kids that they have to agree with him, or else they will not get any toys for their birthdays or that their daddy and mommy will be gone forever.  If you think this is ridiculous, think again.

Look around you and see if you see such juvenile behaviour exhibited by people.  And I am not talking about kids.

I don’t care if the kid is delusional.  Most kids are.  But when the kid goes around imposing his delusion or little fantasy or belief onto others, then I think it is unhealthy.<%