Thunder Dog by Michael Hingson

course load and participating in group discussions, sometimes even shaping discussions.
    Math courses were the hardest, especially if I didn’t have the material. It wasn’t easy for readers who weren’t math or physics majors to convey the equations to me. So I spent lots of time with readers, trying to understand theorems. One professor, Dr. Naylor, at first didn’t describe much of what he was doing in his lectures. I kept at him, asking questions and trying to understand. He was gracious about the whole thing. One day he called me on the phone and said, “Thank you for helping me get to the point where I am verbalizing more.” For all the math students who came after me, I apologize right now if Dr. Naylor overexplained things. I take full responsibility.
    I began to fall in love with physics. C. S. Lewis, the great writer and Christian thinker, once said, “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing . . . to find the place where all the beauty came from.” My love for physics and math is also a quest for beauty and for understanding how the world works. I had always been interested in science, especially electricity and magnetism, probably because of my dad’s influence. For as long as I can remember, I was particularly drawn to physical science. In my freshman year of high school, my science teacher noted my interest and arranged for me to attend the senior physics class for the entire last quarter of my freshman year. I always knew that I would major in physics.
    The precision and complexity of the mathematical equations applied to the real world through the science of physics appealed to my sense of order and balance and helped satisfy my curiosity about how the world works. Mathematician Henri Poincaré put it this way: “The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing.” 1
    My passion for physics coupled with a great deal of hard work paid off in college when I made the dean’s list every quarter. But to make that happen, most of my first years at the university were spent in academic pursuits rather than a social life. I had friends, but my best friend was probably my guide dog. I still wasn’t too interested in girls. Instead I filled my life with academics, reading, and vintage radio.
    My social life began to take off after I started my own radio show on KUCI, the campus radio station. My show featured vintage radio programs from 6 to 9 p.m. every Sunday night. I competed with 60 Minutes, and around the city of Irvine the KUCI Radio Hall of Fame show pushed Mike Wallace’s face in the ratings dust. The radio station operated out of a small room in the physical sciences building. Our equipment was pretty primitive and we each produced our own show. I did research to provide some background and commentary for each vintage radio show I featured. Sometimes I conducted interviews or chatted with callers. I became very comfortable talking to people I didn’t know, and I even began trying out jokes on the air, sort of a poor man’s Dr. Demento. For a while I made it a point to memorize one joke or insult a day. Here’s one I still remember: “How do you tell a male chromosome from a female chromosome? You take down their genes.” Don’t like that one? Okay, here’s another. “Don’t pitch your tent on a stove, because you can’t build a home on the range.” The jokes came in handy later when I went into sales. The better the insult, the more respect you get from the other salespeople. And I had good teachers—Abbott and Costello, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and Milton Berle.
    Whenever I could, I tried to put people at ease with my blindness, even using it for laughs if I could. One of my radio station buddies and fellow science geeks was Mat Kaplan. He had a show on Sunday nights right after mine. He’s still in radio,