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Stand and Deliver

I recently rewatched the movie Stand and Deliver which inspired me to write Math is a Universal Language because in the movie Jaime Escalante tells his Latino students that the Romans and Greeks lacked the concept of zero but the Maya -- "your ancestors" -- had this important advanced mathematical concept. 

The movie also shows him politely standing up to gang members, threatening them, physically restraining one of them to prevent him from joining a fight and running to try to catch a few young guys behaving badly.

Escalante was born in 1930 and the movie is set in 1982. He would have been 51 or 52 years old and the actor who won an award for the role doesn't quite sell those bits of the story for me.

Escalante was originally from Bolivia and of Aymara heritage. The internet suggests the actor who played him was around 5'9" or 5'10" and a photo of them together suggests Escalante was a little shorter but stockier.

He looks vaguely like a shorter version of my father in build and when my father was around 52 years old, my then 16 year old brother asked him for help working on a car. Afterwards, my brother came in the house white as a sheet with eyes as big as saucers stuttering "He ...he bent the metal with his bare hands."

My dad spent 26.5 years in the military and was a gregarious individual and story teller, but also a "speak softly and carry a big stick" type. He didn't brag about intimidating my brother but, whether intentionally or not, that's what that incident boils down to and my brother toned his crap down after that.

The Aymara are mountain peoples with barrel chests and better circulation than average and I can well believe in his 50s Escalante was running down teenagers, politely manhandling gang members and calmly telling them in no uncertain terms "I'm the bad boy in charge here, so don't mess with me."

The movie does suggest Escalante faced some opposition from the administration but the description on his Wikipedia page suggests it was quite substantial and went on for years while he bulled on ahead with getting it done anyway. I imagine he must have been simultaneously uncommonly polite and bad ass at the same time to pull that off, which backs up the idea he politely told gang members "Sit down, shut up, behave." and made it stick.

When my oldest was about seven years old, he watched me stand down three young men trying to force our front door. He tells me I subconsciously reached towards the umbrella nearby, prepared to physically fight them rather than stand down.

He concluded: "Don't mess with mom when you get taller than her. That won't fly."

He also told me other adults routinely loomed over him, implying threats he knew they could not back up without losing their jobs at school, but unlike me, they never actually used their size advantage to control the situation. 

From the time he was an infant, I kept him out of trouble because my arms were longer than his, I was taller and stronger and could physically control the situation. As soon as I realized he would grab anything he could reach while strapped to my chest, I made sure to use my longer reach to get things without letting him have the chance to reach stuff and wreak havoc.

I've heard anecdotes suggesting adults routinely have to clue their teenager "You're not the hotshot you imagine you are and I'm still in charge." Sometimes those anecdotes involve physical confrontation that could have gotten the parent charged as an abusive parent and the child removed from the home.

I never really ran into that because my kids concluded earlier in life "Don't mess with mom when you get taller than her." And my father probably intentionally sent that message without violence when he helped my brother repair his car.

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