One thing I never gave a fuck about -- the grade school SCIENCE FAIR. Every year, it was mandatory to participate and about a month ahead, I started to feel ultra-anxious, wondering what the hell I was going to do to make the grade. I knew I'd never top that girl or boy who would bust out the plaster volcano that spewed real goo (someone always had a damn volcano). And I knew it was really the kid's dad or mom who made that volcano anyway, so I was pretty screwed when it came to topping that awesomeness, so I always wanted to bail out on the whole event, but participating wasn't a choice.
Mandatory.
(Side note: this morning, my roommate Buzz told me that he was one of the assholes who made one of those f'n volcanoes, and I was about to slug him. Then I informed him that I repeatedly write lewd poetry about him on this site, and he told me he'd skin me alive. All love around here).
Back to the story. Why wasn't there a WEIRDO FAIR? Why couldn't we be dreamers or artists for a month? That never happened. Hands down, I would've nailed that one.
One year (not sure how old I was), as usual, I was trying to figure out what to do for a Science experiment right at the last minute. Most people prepared for months, perhaps years. Not me. Frustrated, feeling that familiar knot of worry in my chest, I brushed my teeth and headed to bed. Well, that evening, the toothpaste was on its last legs, right at the end, and in that divine moment, I looked in the mirror with utter joy, raised my arm, and shouted, "Aha!" I finally had my idea. I decided to construct a mechanism to squeeze out the last bit of toothpaste. So I made this archaic and somewhat "vintage-looking" contraption out of wood; I could slide the toothpaste end in and then, I made wooden wheels that turned, yes turned, to squeeze the tube nice and tight, pushing the last of the paste right on outta there. No waste there. I even spray-painted the toothpaste machine blue for an added touch. Not sure what I put on my poster board display, and I'm not certain what the experiment, hypothesis, and conclusion were, but I imagine that I made up something ultra interesting. My mom, who helped me construct the wheels, thought I was a genius.
Another year, when I was a little older, I felt the old dread coming on, and each year the level of dread became worse as the pressure rose. I knew that the horrible FAIR was coming up, so I decided to start early and prepare for a change. I have no idea how, but for some odd reason, I got a hold of a professional device that measured people's hearing. Then I found my test subjects:
1) Mechanics in a car dealership
and
2) Workers in a pediatrician's office
I tested all of their hearing. I went through like 100 people, give or take a few, and they all complied, even though I had no idea what I was doing with that test gadget, but I was all dressed up in a long, white coat, taking notes, looking serious as hell. And the funniest part was that between test subjects, I don't think I cleaned the device that I stuck in their ears.
My hypothesis and conclusion were the following:
Hypothesis: Mechanics won't have as good of hearing as people who are in doctor's offices.
Conclusion: People who work in car dealerships have really bad hearing, compared to nurses.
Now, I know this conclusion might seem obvious to everyone, since the noise level at a dealership is like 50X that of a doctor's office, and in addition, many of those mechanics listened to heavy metal, or they just needed to clean their ears, but I had to prove my conclusion anyway. To this day, I still have no idea where that hearing tester came from.; it was probably something we found at a garage sale, and it was no doubt constructed by Hippocrates himself.
So I never won any award, not even Honorable Mention, but I still think I deserved a booby prize. I mean, the amount of creativity that went into writing about my experiments should have topped everyone, due to the fact that my experiments made absolutely no sense, and yet I still passed.
I wish I had that toothpaste gadget right now. These days, they do have little plastic things to put on the end of the tube to squeeze out the juice, but my toothpaste machine was so much more exciting. And not to mention, it was spray-painted blue, which was highly artistic and somewhat toxic.
Gotta go. Time's running out, and I'm finally working on constructing my volcano.
C.A. MacConnell
