What have you witnessed someone do that made you realize he or she is really, really smart?

My wife's grandfather. He's a retired electrical engineer with a dozen patents to his name and a long

list of recognitions I can't be bothered to remember or name. I always knew he was brilliant,

but never realized just how until one day last year when we were visiting and he got a phone call.

Keep in mind, he's been retired for 20 years and is 86 years old.

The phone call was from an electrical engineering firm from halfway across the globe,

asking if they could fly him out to a site and have him consult on the energy capture

of a hydroelectric dam they were building.

They'd run into the problem that none of them, all electrical engineers, could solve. They had consulted three of the top

related university departments in the US on the issue, and the last one had referred them to him.

Twenty minutes on the phone, and he agreed to think about it. Two days later, he had solved their

issue and written the solution on a

single 8 by 11 sheet of paper, which he scanned and emailed to the company. He said he took so long

to write it up because he didn't want to have to fly all the way there at his age. His explanation

was so clear, I was able to understand it and follow it with no relevant higher education.

I spent a year trying to track down an intermittent

issue on my car. An older gentleman on the forum had suggested a likely cause, but I disregarded it

as the parts had been replaced. Sure enough, he was right, and I managed to follow from that

to find the other half of the problem. I'd had a mechanic look at it, I'd spent hours tearing my hair

out trying to fix it, nothing worked

prior to that. Respect your elders, folks. One time, my drunk uncle was in jail and needed bail

money. And being that my dad was the only one in the family with any real savings, they all

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