The fact that he shook hands with his left hand helped make him more interesting than he really was. At the very least, it threw people off guard when they first met him. The fact that his wife was a writer who had not written anything in five years, not even a grocery list, helped make him seem patient and kind, although he really wasn't. (She could tell you this without words, just in the way she held her shoulders when he would tell jokes.) The fact that his youngest child, a boy, always spoke in a fake Scottish accent only served to heighten his appearance of eccentricity, because few fathers had a five-year-old with an IQ of 160, let alone one with a thick, phony brogue. All of these facts, along with many others, led him to believe his own story, which although quite interesting, was not true. Not to be harsh, because most of what made up his personality was interesting and real. But for whatever reason, his need to be something other than he was, drove him to create a facade he thought others preferred. "Aye, at soom point they'll discover ye fer whatcha really arre," his son had told him one night, shortly before bedtime. Fortunately, the boy genius meant this in a positive way, because despite the man's many faults, he really loved his father so very much. If only that fact didn't escape his father's notice.