Don't get fresh with me!

One morning, while I was eating my breakfast cereal, Jerry was in the kitchen putting together our lunches to take to work. He was cutting some pineapple spears we got at Costco into bite-sized pieces. As I was swallowing a mouthful of cereal he said, "I sure am glad to know that my pineapple is 'Alpine Fresh.'"

It took a bit of time to regain my composure and wipe up the cereal that had sprayed out of my nose.

To add to the absurdity, the pineapple's label tells us Alpine Fresh is in Florida, a very flat state. Its highest point is a whopping 345 feet above sea level.

Alpine, indeed! But no doubt fresh!

Curb your enthusiasm

"I have an analytical mind" the scientist father would say while sagely tapping his temple with his index finger. He'd say this with a tone that conveyed the rest of his thought: "you idiot child!" This would be in response to such things as his son's putting the wrong sized nut on a bolt and asking for help undoing it or accidentally knocking a "precision instrument" off the table.

One thing that bewilders me about this analytical mind is that it never lifted a sage finger to try to pass on the love of discovering the unknown. He never was involved in my education where I loved science. He never tried to encourage that interest.

In the second grade we had an assignment to do an experiment for our science fair. The best experiments of each class were entered in the school's fair. We had a book of experiments to give us ideas. I chose one that demonstrates that salt water is more buoyant than fresh water. My exhibit showed that a pencil weighted with a thumb tack in its eraser (to keep it from simply floating on its side) floats higher in a glass of salty water than in unsalted water. My entry didn't make it out of the classroom.

That was my only entry in a science fair. I've never been good at finding problems to solve. (I am very good at solving problems that thinkers come up with.) I wonder how things might be different if my father had been involved by challenging me analyze things better. Or to come up with questions that need to be answered then trying to answer them.

I guess he felt that teaching kids the the arts and sciences was the work of school teachers. At home kids are to learn such useful skills as how to fetch a 5/8"—11/16" box-end wrench from a horribly unorganized toolbox in less than two seconds.

Even when I misunderstood something in his area of expertise, chemistry, he wouldn't take time to teach anything about the subject. One morning while eating my Malt-O-Meal, I mentioned that when I add the sugar to it, it seems to get a little more watery than it was before. In school we had recently learned that when carbohydrates burn they turn into water and carbon dioxide. I speculated that maybe there was a chemical reaction going on where the sugar, a carbohydrate, is turning into CO₂ and H₂O and the newly formed water was staying in the cereal. He replied, in his analytical mind tone, if that were so that I could achieve the same result by just tossing in a lump of coal.

First, Mr. Scientist, my speculated reaction doesn't work with elemental carbon. It needs the hydrogen. And, besides, why not take the opportunity to do something useful like explain osmosis? Scientist, indeed! Analytical mind, bah!

OK, maybe he did occasionally encourage scientific investigation. He gave me the Edmund Scientific catalog. But he didn't often help me choose stuff or help me learn things from the stuff I got.

Music, it turns out, became a very important part of my life.

In the fourth grade I took up the violin. In the fifth grade I was going to try out the deeper, richer sounding cello. Here, my father was much more supportive than with the sciences. He encouraged my musical education with the little contract added to the bottom of this form:

Springer is where the New Mexico Boys’ School, a detention center for male juveniles, was at the time. I was threatened with being sent to Springer for things as minor as looking at him with crossed eyes. Since my father never exhibited a sense of humor, these threats must have been real.

By the time I got enrolled in the music program they had run out of cellos. I took a stab at the violin for another year. I'm sure I didn't practice daily but my contract became null and void when they ran out of cellos. No reform school because of a technicality!

Of course my father's taste in music didn't include what comes out of a cello or violin. His taste was that served up by K-Circle-B in Albuquerque. That was middle-of-the-road popular and country music. So he never really encouraged my musical education. (He probably discouraged it...the screechiness probably hurt his ears tremendously.)

I wonder how my life would have been different if I had gotten some encouragement in my attempts at learning music.

But if things had been different, I wouldn't be who I am now. I'm pretty happy with how I turned out.

Still, a little enthusiastic encouragement can go a long way. (I might have even had some happier memories to share.)