The worst-looking car in the company lot was Jerry’s. It made no sense to Ron. Jerry was, pardon the expression, a hell of an engineer, and a beloved mentor to his younger colleagues. His skills were rare. Knowing so, he did all he could to pass them on, for his responsibility was an arcane but critically essential part of the company’s flagship product. Tens of billions of dollars worth sold; not Apple, but you’d know the name. Jerry had to have been solidly in six figures, pre bonuses, for years, yet daily into our Texas lot came his tiny, elderly Toyota, no AC, paint sun-bleached dull to a color with no name.

The drab little car matched the drab little man. Jerry was not tiny, but he was small, his appearance bewilderingly confounding. His clothes? Better than most in our jeans-typical workplace: linen slacks in summer, worsted wool in winter, white button-downs, belt and shoes always gleaming. Sharp-dressed, nonetheless he seemed unkempt, drab; later we would know why.

Jerry was doing very well at work. His specialty fell into “mixed-signal design.” You may know that electronics engineering is divided into “analog” and “digital” with each tribe having, as tribes do, some trepidation for the other.

Mixed-signal design though is much more than knowing two things. Its art is to arrange analog strengths to buttress digital weaknesses and vice versa. Done well, it’s amazing. A 1970’s CB radio has a heavy knob to manually switch 23 quartz crystals, one per channel. Your cell phone, your wi-fi, today pick automatically from hundreds of channels, with one crystal and a mixed-signal marvel “fractional-N phase-locked loop.” Jerry was a mixed-signal master.

Ron was doing well at work, though his specialty was entirely different, so he wouldn’t have really known Jerry, but a frustrated clown in the executive suite took to juggling: specifically, juggling people into different offices. Ron was told to make the floorplan for his workgroup, so gave himself the sole office whose window was shaded by a tree. There he watched mother skunk tend babies in their home beneath the poison-ivy planter between building and parking lot. Jerry’s workgroup got the next offices down the hall. Ron and Jerry became friends.

Jerry was a farm boy from the prairies; Canadian or American, I don’t know. Ron was more removed from his family’s east-coast farms, but in retelling his dad’s farmboy stories, the talk turned to religion. Advice that you should not discuss religion at work be damned, small-minded Christianity was the first serious discussion between Ron and Jerry. Dogma holds that Jesus was and eternally is God’s only son. Jerry and Ron agreed it was such hubris to place such a limit. Who knows all that God will and will not do?

Ron was doing well at work, but at home, less so. Childless, they’d suffered a miscarriage. Families who have been through this know “suffer” is correct. For Ron’s family, time and biology were no longer on their side, no matter how much they wanted to tend at least one baby.

Ron kept his personal life private to all but a few most trustworthy friends. Jerry, blessed with a large family, with children both by biology and by adoption, fell naturally into his role as a mentor as Ron’s family dodged Minotaurs in the maze of adoption rules. Those tasked to match family and a child matched Ron’s safety-engineering skills to Emily, at barely past a year already a sufficiently skilled gymnast to climb unassisted from the crib.

When Ron explained the new challenges posed by Emily, Jerry had good advice. Ron came from a family of brothers, with no sisters, and Ron’s wife had no sisters. But Jerry knew so many good and helpful things about baby girls.

As the years went, Ron’s office filled with childhood art and photos of Emily climbing, dancing, singing, and yes, at gymnastics. Jerry took to stopping by Ron’s office on his way out, to keep up with how Emily was growing, and to give advice from time to time. Jerry knew so many good and helpful things about young girls.

“Out of Order” to most of us, isn’t a good thing. On a vending machine it means “don’t insert money.” Computer architects think different; “out of order” names a brilliant invention. Computer programs are long lists of instructions telling the computer to do tiny bits of work. Sometimes they must be done in exactly the order listed, but sometimes not. Every modern computer finishes things faster by finding earlier instructions that can be done without waiting for later ones to finish. “Out of Order” also describes a story that relates later events before coming back to earlier ones, but I’ve tried to avoid that here.

Governments too can be out of order, which is to be feared. All have a “Child Protective Services” or agency of similar name, understaffed by bureaucrats and underpaid recent social-work graduates, tasked from protecting children up to a certain age from the worst abuse. In government, sometimes “worst” and “abuse” are redefined for political gain. No parent relishes the idea of becoming victim of a CPS mistake or Kafkaesque disagreement over what’s best for their child, so most feel some relief when their family outgrows the reach of CPS. Perhaps it’s felt more keenly by those whose families are in some way outside usual norms.

Eventually, the youngest of Jerry’s family outgrew CPS reach. Then it happened. Ron knew Jerry could be unconventional, even iconoclast, but he still seemed the conservative white-shirt ex-IBM engineer, so it surprised Ron one afternoon when a smiling Jerry stepped in his office to say goodbye for the day. Ron had no idea how to respond as he took in Jerry’s white blouse, laced collar closed by a pin with black enamel, matching earrings, and lightly feathered hair, and so directed his gaze and conversation away from those.

In a few days came the email, division wide, from some high-level executive, announcing something done only a few times before in the history of the company: change of gender presentation by a high-value employee. Jerry was henceforth to be known as Lynn; those with questions could attend a formal meeting at such and such time tomorrow, in the videoconference rooms of all key sites.

It was still Jerry’s email address that Ron used to tell Lynn: “I don’t know what to say, but I support you, congratulations, and I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow.” Lynn replied with thanks.

That night, Ron read about Lynn Conway. Everyone in microelectronics, at least of a certain age, knows of Lynn Conway. You’ve heard of Moore’s Law, which noted how manufacturing economics leads to growing chip size? As Moore’s law went into its second decade, into the void of understanding how to design more and more complex chips came the textbook Introduction to VLSI Systems, by Mead and Conway. Carver Mead did the physics part. Lynn Conway told how to handle design complexity.

What is less known to chip engineers about Lynn Conway, is that she invented out of order execution. It’s less known because for decades her name was not on the various publications and disclosures. They carried her old name, or should I say his old name. I don’t know it, or want to know it; records have been changed for the sake of the family’s privacy. Ron might have found it on the Internet that night, but he won’t say. For a while it was pretty well concealed maybe as a matter of national security. Lynn Conway has three great achievements: taming chip complexity, inventing out-of-order execution, and leading the US Strategic Defense Initiative for the Reagan administration.

Ron read too much that night, but with coffee of sufficient quantity if not flavor, he made it to the meeting. Across one side of the conference table were a row of women, Lynn among them, smiling and animated in a tasteful skirt suit, modest matching pumps, familiar blouse, pin, and earrings, hair full. Perhaps a touch excessive makeup? Debatable; her intent was to make a statement.

Someone soon started the meeting. Like most company meetings, the fewer words said about most of it, the better. Management congratulated themselves for being progressive, thanked Lynn for her past work, allowed her a little speech to introduce her wife and a few non-work friends there for support, and to take questions.

There were not many questions. Ron held his for later. As the meeting broke, Ron stepped aside and waited to congratulate Lynn. Grasping her right hand, he shook, laid his left hand atop hers, held, and said “I hope it’s appropriate to say this: You go, girl.”

Lynn laughed through a smile. “Thank you Ron.”

Ron continued, “How did you pick the name. To honor Lynn Conway?”

“No,” and Ron had never heard such joy in her voice, “That would be a good reason, but Lynn’s also my given name.”

As the years went, Lynn continued stopping by Ron’s office to keep up with how Emily was growing, and offer good advice. Lynn knew so many good and helpful things about teenage girls.