So picture me, 1987. I'm sitting in my 7th grade science class. I am chubby, bespectacled and AWKWARD. My earth science teacher has this ancient reel-to-reel projector that he is setting up to show us a film on nuclear fission and fusion (Reagan-era kids. Let's give them nightmares!)
Mr. Yonke does not realize that he is determining my future.
The film starts to play, with it's crackles and off-key music and strange strands of fuzz that have gotten onto the film-tape.
And then the scientists show up, mixing strange chemicals and talking about reactors and plutonium and all kinds of crazy shiznat that will melt your skin off. And they are hot - the scientists! They are smart and they know math equations and they can tell you how the earth was formed. And that's where it started in my adolescent crazy hormonal mind. And the computers they were using were as big as my house. I have one of those now! The scientist, not the house-sized computer. But he COULD run it with all of it's inefficient retro algorithms. And he wants to teach physics someday, and reads Stephen Hawking before bed with his crazy, thick glasses.
And I think I'll keep him, because he's smart in a different way than me, and that is perfect. :)
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