Captain Jebbediah Quixote Scurvy Presents...

Failed Scientific Pursuits of my Childhood

When I was a kid, I was a real smart-a$$ (which should surprise nobody). I loved science and wanted nothing more than to grow up and do science things, which I guess would consist of observing slugs in their natural environments, making slime and mucous, and then looking at these things in various states of dissection under a microscope. You see, scientists aren't really as smart as they seem. Scientists spend a great deal of time dressing up in lab coats and writing up very boring theses using language a lawyer would be proud of to cover the fact that these are people who get to play with lasers and high- powered telescopes and space ships for a living. Scientists, my friends, are nothing more than children in adult bodies who know how to lie extremely well. Every now and then, one of them comes up with something "important", and there's a big to-do and Nobel prizes are handed out. For example, can you imagine that it took scientists from the dawn of time until the mid 1700s to discover something as simple as gravity? Now, c'mon. I was aware that something was pulling down on my body since the time that I was a kid. And don't even get me started on the sun-centered solar system.

Anyway, when I was a kid and made all of these startling discoveries in my town library or by asking my parents, I realized that I was smarter than the sum total of all scientists who had gone before me. I was glad, because I realized that I would make discoveries in my lifetime which would allow for interstellar space travel and an end to hunger, to name a few. So I read lots of books which explained to me the basic stuff that I thought I had best understand before I began exploring the cosmos (for example, if I knew how gravity worked, it would stand to reason that I should be able to build a helicopter backpack. And I tried, in the third grade. Please don't ask how that project turned out).

Eventually, I moved on to bigger and better things. My first chemistry set was a great joy. I remember that after having the set for a short time, I realized that I needed a few more test-tubes. I mean, the set only came with four, and that kind of limits how many disgusting things you can mix together. So I went down to Ed's Enterprises (now defunct) and bought more test tubes. I looked for a few chemicals while I was there which were alleged to explode on contact with certain things, but unfortunately old Ed just didn't have any nitro-glycerin or uranium in stock.

My chemical endeavours were not exactly of a scientific nature, although my brother and I pretended that lives hung in the balance. We had a card table set up in the basement with the whole of our chemical set deployed on top of it. We also had a chalkboard set up next to the table. He and I would put on our oldest clothes which we didn't mind having eaten by active ingredients and head down early in the morning. After watching such science-oriented morning TV shows as "Hey Vern, It's Ernest" and "Tom and Jerry", we would adjourn to the "laboratory" and begin the day's experiments. Either my brother or I would go up to the chalkboard and write something like this:

Today's Experiment (6/10/87)
Scientists: Matt and Mark
Location: The Basement
Purpose: Create a substance which permanently stains clothing.

Once we had established our mission, my brother and I would put on our safety goggles (which came in handy on more than one occassion) and proceed with the "observations". He and I would smear the rankest-looking chemicals onto each other and observe the effects. For example, I observed that by rubbing hydrochloric acid onto my brother's forearm he would scream in pain, cry, and complain loudly of a burning sensation. After carefully recording this in my journal, I would pour water onto the wound to flush out the chemical. At this point, I observed that the screams got louder and a smoking, fiery substance entered the air. I would record this in the journal as well, usually after I had finished explaining to my parents why the fire alarm had gone off, and why my brother would run away screaming whenever I entered the room.

It was through painstaking research such as this that I proved conclusively that acid burns skin and one should never pour water on an acid. Thank you.

My parents eventually shut down the laboratory, citing an unusually high amount of work-related injuries. Only slightly discouraged, I moved on to The Next Big Thing, which, obviously, was model rocketry. This went fine, until we discovered that horizontal launches were possible, and I'm going to end this article right here in order not to incriminate myself.

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