On Science Fair: Part 1

I've had the stupid video bar set to kids doing science fair- not that anyone watches the videos*- but still, I've been meaning to finish up a little doodle-whacky about science fairs for a while. Ain't finished it yet. Ain't edited it yet. But here's a peek at the start, anyway.
*Or reads the blog, for that matter


On Science Fairs

I nearly got my ass kicked thoroughly my junior year of high school. I blame the science fair.

I can’t logically blame the fair- I just don’t like to admit that I may have been being a dick, that my potential thrashing was deserved.

The kid, Ralph Perkins (a pseudonym, of course- I don’t want him to come find me and make up for lost time) wasn’t really an asshole, just a big, dumb jock. He was, however, the crony of Randy Wayne Clyde (his real name, only because I’m certain he’s probably in jail right now) who was an asshole, and considerably more intelligent than Ralph, to the tune of having him do all the dirty work when it came to threatening skinny little punk-ass-goth-lings like myself. I had clashed with the both of them over the years. Rich was scary, a freckle-faced, handsome bully, feared by the geeky masses and one you didn’t want to cross. Ralph, though, was an easy target, and since he had never actually struck me over the course of 6 years or so, I felt reasonably confident that I could mock him. He probably deserved it anyway for throwing his muscle around like he did- while he never hit a geekling, he was notorious for hip-checking us in gym class-, but it’s hard to place blame on someone for using their only feasible attribute to further their own interests.

It was the drawing that did it. The original drawing was destroyed just moments after its inception, but I did reproduce it. Scroll down to the bottom of the blog and you can find a replica I spent far too much time on (it is summer vacation after all). It was a take-off on the old science fair standard, that of the project where you wire up potatoes with copper and zinc nodules in order to power a light bulb. Probably I shouldn’t have passed it around the room, particularly as we were all seated in a circle, the one thing that would guarantee that everyone saw it. And by everyone, I mean Ralph Perkins.

He shot me a glare of complete and threatening malice, and promised that come three o’clock, when everyone had to cross the bridge over the highway on the way towards the schools buses, I would be pulverized. It was a bottleneck, this bridge,the only feasible route to get to the buses and consequently home. For this reason it was unofficially designated as The Best Spot for after-school boxing sessions. You couldn’t avoid your tormentor unless you wanted to walk home, and I lived on the opposite side of town, way too far to go by foot. It had the additional benefit that when it was crowded, teachers and administrators couldn’t get in to stop the fight.

I elected to walk home that day.

All of this I tell to you only because I still think the drawing was sort of clever, and it deserves a second airing. I now need to explain my own complicated relationship with the science fair. It starts out sketchily and never really escapes this orbit.

I remember participating in the science fair only twice, and only remember ever assembling 3 projects. The first was when I was still in the phase where I really didn’t have a grasp on reality quite yet- probably about first grade, if the kids I now teach are any indication. If I recall correctly, I had tied together a motley assortment of objects that I considered ‘scientific’- a battery, a fork, a flashlight, a paper airplane- all with my spare shoelaces. I must have known how to tie knots- let’s update that to elementary school 2.0. I’m not sure what I expected to happen, but my mother was encouraging, as mothers are apt to be, rather blindly when their own kids are involved. My brother- ever the critic- did point out that what was actually going to happen was fucking nothing, and despite my mother trying to censor his disparaging comments about my first foray into the greater sphere of Science, I did have to conceded he was right. I didn’t enter it in the fair.

By fourth grade, science fair was required, and I decided to do my project on airplanes.

I was obsessed with airplanes as a kid, in the same way that other kids are obsessed with dinosaurs. I could identify the make and model of commercial airliners at 5,000 ft., by noting the placement of the engines and the wingspan. I had memorized all the tail logos of all the major carriers- Pan Am, British Airways, Air France, Air India- and I obsessively drew them, as well as all the major models- DC 10’s, 747’s 737’s. I even submitted one of my airplane drawings to Highlights for Children, to be printed in the last few pages, the section where they published drawings of kids from all around the world. I renewed a one-year subscription to the magazine, waiting to see my masterpiece acknowledged. They never did publish it, a pattern that persists today, and goes a long way in explaining why I have a blog.

Anywhoosle (a word which might also explain my lack of publication), I decided I would play on my strengths for this project, and it seemed natural and scientific to catalog all the tail logos of the major airlines first.

“What are you doing?” asked my brother.

“Working on my science fair project”, I replied.

“What’s it supposed to be about?” He inquired.

“Airplanes!” I retorted, clearly enthused.

“You, know”, he proceeded to point out “ the logos of the companies don’t really have much to do with science.”

“You leave him alone!” shrieked my mother from the kitchen. She was a social worker.

Again, I had to- with mounting distress- admit he had a point. There really wasn’t anything scientific about being able to identify the likely ethnic demographic of the patrons of the airline. I switched my project to “How Airplanes Fly.” I think I got a “B”.

My third and final project, in the 7th Grade, was my first foray into ethics violations and falsified data. I had chosen to study the effect of pollution on plants, and had convinced my parents to shell out loot for two fancy houseplants and their car keys, with the stipulation that I would only start the car in the garage, with the door open. The plan was to run car exhaust into a jar, trapping the ‘pollutants’ inside and upending the jar over one of the plants. The other would also be in a jar, but with clean air. I understood the notion of a 'controlled experiment.'

I didn't understand the notion of 'doing the actual work'. Through procrastination and a tragic miscalculation as to how long it would take a plant to wither and die (probably never, realistically) I found myself with two completely healthy rhododendrons two days before my project was due. I had not once exposed either of them to car exhaust, and found myself frantically holding one of them in front of the exhaust pipe, choking on the fumes, for minutes at a time. Predictably, it didn’t do anything. The plant looked as healthy as when we bought it, and I started to seriously panic. Fortunately, we were a suburban family, necessarily over-concerned with our lawn, and the solution presented itself to me right there in that very garage.

You’d think the judges would have recognized the smell of weed killer coming off in waves from the dead plant. I could smell it clearly, there in the library where the Fair was held, but perhaps that was just the odor of guilt. In fact, I ended up getting an Honorable Mention. These things are always skewed, and I now know why.

Some two decades later, I find myself in charge of the Elementary Science Fair at the private school. I’m entrusted with organizing all the projects, making a floor plan, recruiting judges, and devising a fair and equitable judging system. I can only say, I did my level best. If there is anything or anyone to blame, I can only point to Karma. I suppose I deserved it, but let it be known, I have now paid in full for my transgressions. This is my receipt, dammit.