My son the academic

Yiddisher Mommas are well know for repeated references to "my son the doctor" but I have always thought that "my son the mathematician" rather trumped that. My son Joe has however now moved another rung up the ladder. Although he is only in his third year of his mathematics studies at university, he has just been given a job tutoring first-year students -- in statistics. So as far as I can see he is now officially an academic.

I spent a considerable part of my academic career teaching statistics to sociology students so we have another example of the old proverb that "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree".

The parallels between my life and Joe's get a bit eerie at times. As one example, he had his first car accident in almost the same place and in almost the same circumstances as my second car accident 40 years earlier.