Yesterday, the boys in the local town, who he usually gets on with fairly well, refused to talk to him. They ganged up in a group on the main street and called out taunts. Weirder still, several adults refused to acknowledge me when I greeted them on the street. As well as that, just about all the young girls we passed, from nine to nineteen, went out of their way to say hello to him. The conclusion I was given after some brooding silence on the way home was: "Don't worry Dad, they are just dumb animals and we have disturbed the pecking order, they will get over it when they realise we don't want to fertilise their females".
It must be strange to be famous. Fifteen minutes, locally, is enough for us. Today, after work, we were shopping in Toowoomba, the nearest city. Everywhere we went there were flickers of recognition at Adam and half smiles on peoples faces but never a word said. Never enough to be absolutely certain about any one contact but, in total effect, extremely disturbing. We escaped to the car and collapsed in hysterical laughter. Adam's conjecture was that we are now living in a twilight zone episode!
Steve
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And feeling slightly ashamed for giving it a plug here when I hardly ever contribute, you could sign Terry Tao's petition to save Mathematics at USQ here:
http://terrytao.wordpress.com/about/petition-to-support-maths-statistics-and-computing-at-usq/
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