Discover Discovery

On April 17, 2012, the day after The Girl ran a hot, humid Boston Marathon and I drove for nine hours, we woke groggily and got on the first Metro to the Mall.  History was happening, and since we're both great big Space Nerds, we wanted to see it happen.

The space shuttle Discovery was getting a ride to her retirement home, and on the way, she was going to fly low over the DC area several times.  I'd been keyed up for this event since a friend sent me a link and I found out that it would happen in my new backyard.  We had grabbed a quick breakfast at Panera, and sat on the Mall (I found out this morning that I should always capitalize that), waiting and wondering where we would see it.

As ten o'clock approached, the area filled with people--most of them seemed to know that Discovery would first appear for us near the Washington Monument, because that was the obvious focal point of the crowd.  We even saw a few camera crews setting up and getting B-roll footage.  Then someone shouted, and everyone leaped to their feet, pointing and cheering as we saw the shuttle swoop low over the horizon--and disappear almost immediately behind the trees.  Surely that couldn't be it?  I didn't even have my camera out in time, and missed part of the flight because I looked down to check the camera.  Give me more, NASA!!

Our patience was soon rewarded; Discovery and her fighter jet escort made three passes over the Mall; on the last two, she was close enough that I could clearly see the NASA logo on the 747's tail fin.

Discovery and the Smithsonian Castle

Nobody else dressed for the occasion.

Discovery had a fighter jet escort, in case she tried anything funny.

I held out my thumb; they didn't even slow down.

The Agony of De Feet

This Monday, while thousands of runners staggered their way through a sweltering Boston Marathon, I stood on the sidelines and watched.  I like to think I'm in reasonable shape, but marathoners make me feel fat.  I might weigh more than the first place man and woman combined.

The Girl ran, and performed admirably.  I stood very still, shoulder to shoulder with other race fans, for over six hours, and managed to not fall down or punch anyone.  I'm sure hers was a greater effort, but I don't know how wide the margin is.

My one disappointment was that I never actually saw The Girl during the race--had it not been for a friend who called me with updates on her progress (which she received via text message), I wouldn't even have known she had crossed the finish line.  However, it's hard to be truly disappointed while watching the Boston Marathon.  It is a spectacle of the grandest scale, and I got many glimpses into the very best of humanity.

Several troops ran, in uniform, with full packs.  I think some of them may have been ROTC, but whenever any of them passed, the crowd roared.  Many people yelled their thanks.  I hope they heard us.

Some runners would wave their arms at the crowd, encouraging us to cheer louder.  I surmised that if they had the energy to coax louder cheers from us, they probably didn't need the support, but that didn't stop anyone.

Occasionally, we had other reason to cheer.  A few times, a runner would shudder to a stop right in front of us, less than a tenth of a mile from the finish line.  The crowd would urge him to continue, and remind him "you can do it!!"  Once, I even saw two runners turn back and take the arms of a man who might not have made it on his own.  The three of them walked the rest of the way.  After 26.1 miles of hills and heat, they still had enough left to help someone else finish.

I'm proud of all the runners that day.  I'm proud of the crowd around me for supporting the runners.  Most of all, I'm proud of The Girl, who ran an outstanding race in really tough conditions.  Kudos to everyone.

Tiny Balls of Fire

It was Ricky’s idea, of course. The crazy stuff was always Ricky’s idea. Even if we were just joshing about something, he’d be the one to take it too far, get that look in his eye, and decide to do it for real. Somehow, he’d get us to laugh it off, and sometimes one of us would somehow get the blame. This time, “someone else” was Jimmy, as far as we were concerned, but we were just kidding him about that. Jimmy had recently decided that, as he was on “the cusp of manhood,” he should start going by James, but we had all grown up together, so he was still Jimmy because he had always been Jimmy. Anyway, he was the one who told us about something he had learned in his fancy-pants honors chemistry class. They’d been studying polymers, and he was all wound up about long chains and short chains, and chain gangs, I guess, and he told us that some polymers will melt under heat, and can be re-formed, and others will just turn to shit when you heat them, but whatever plastic they use on ping pong balls (he told us, but I forget) will burn.

That’s when Ricky got that look in his eye, and some big damn crazy grin. He wanted to try “extreme ping pong” that very weekend. His aunt had an old ping pong table she kept out in her barn, and sometimes we’d play on it, but none of us were very good, which of course just made the rest of us realize what a very bad idea this was. Thing is, we all knew Ricky’d do it anyway, and somehow we got the idea in our heads that if we were all there, it might provide what Hugo’s daddy would call a “moderating influence,” as though anybody could moderate Ricky.

Saturday morning, right after breakfast, each of us rode out to Ricky’s aunt’s barn, and the very first thing we did was to convince him that we should at least drag the table outside before we started anything “extreme.” He grumbled a bit, because it looked like it might rain that morning, but the rest of us figured that was even more reason to go outside, considering the rest of the plan. I think it was the last good idea any of us had that day.

We decided to get everyone in from the start, so we set up a doubles game with me and Ricky against Hugo and Jimmy-James. Ricky was wearing that hooded sweatshirt he wore almost everywhere and almost all the time, Hugo was wearing his nylon rain jacket he used when he thought it might rain but when he also thought he might get dirty or go running through the woods, on account of he didn’t want to mess up his good rain jacket that his dad had bought him, and we were all wearing these lab goggles Jimmy had borrowed from the school that looked like swim goggles, but they had these little air vents around the sides. I only mention this because it’s important to the story. “Pertinent,” like Hugo’s dad would say.

None of us was real sure how to get the ball lit without burning our fingers, or even how we was going to serve it once it was on fire, but Ricky played at that table a lot more than the rest of us, and he played around and did some other tricks, too, so he could balance the ball on the flat of the paddle pretty easy, and even get it to roll around just inside the edge pretty good, and he figured he could lay a burning match on the paddle, roll the ball towards it so it would light, and then let it roll off and bounce on the table for the serve, so that’s what he set out to do, but it didn’t go quite like he wanted.

That little ball lit up ok, but there was that rubber skin on the paddle, and the match was laying right on it. Later, Jimmy said he figured that rubber must have softened a bit and gotten sticky, and that explained what happened next, which was that the ball didn’t roll off the paddle. Ricky turned it right on edge, and the ball kept burning, but it didn’t fall, so he gave the paddle a little shake to try to get it off, then he gave it a little bigger shake, and pretty soon he was waving that paddle pretty hard, flaming ping pong ball and all.

Well, apparently even a slightly-melted ping pong paddle isn’t all that sticky, because it could only take so much waving, and that burning ping pong ball came right off, flew clear across the table, and stuck smack-dab in the middle of Jimmy’s lab goggles, so it was pretty good we was all wearing them.

Jimmy’s usually pretty level-headed and calm, but when all you can see is a burning ping pong ball an inch above your nose and your hair’s starting to burn a little, anybody’s liable to some panic, which is exactly what Jimmy did. He shrieked like Mrs. Toomey’s cat did when Donna Withers accidentally ran over its tail with her bike, then ran in a couple little circles and plowed right into his doubles partner. Now remember, Hugo was wearing that cheap nylon jacket, which is just another kind of plastic according to Jimmy, so when Jimmy crashed into him and they both went down, Jimmy rolled away and had somehow lost his goggles which calmed him a bit, but the burning goop that used to be our ping pong ball was stuck to Hugo’s jacket, which made him a lot less calm.

In school, they always tell us to stop, drop, and roll if we’re on fire, and Hugo already had two of those done, since Jimmy had knocked him over, but instead of rolling he came up yelling and running, and I don’t think he gave it much thought, because he went straight for Ricky’s aunt’s barn.

Meanwhile, Ricky was still waving the paddle, because it was real old and the wood was probably dry, so it had caught fire, too, and instead of dropping it in the mud and stomping on it a bit, he just kept flapping like some crazed one-winged chicken that don’t know it can’t fly. I didn’t know if he was playing or panicking, but either way I figured it was bad news for Ricky to be around any more fire, so I pushed him hard at the puddle closest to the table, and ran after Hugo, jumping over Jimmy on the way.

Usually when we went into that barn, it took a moment for our eyes to adjust, even though there’s barely more boards than gaps between ‘em on those old walls, but that day it was real easy, because Hugo was running around all over in there, bouncing off walls and stalls on account of he wasn’t looking where he was going, because he was looking over his shoulders and yelling, and his coat was still on fire, so it was real easy to see him. It looked like he was trying to flap his way out of his jacket, but the zipper had caught way down at the bottom, so he couldn’t get it off his back. About that time he saw me and came running over for some help, and I probably should have run off myself then, but he was too close too fast, and he crashed right into me.

I stumbled back, and we both hit the big sliding door, and before either of us realized I’d done it, I had grabbed the bottom of Hugo’s coat and yanked it up over his head, turning it inside out as it went, and as soon as it was clear of him, we both lit out of the barn and back towards the table and Ricky and Jimmy.

Jimmy, who had almost calmed back down by then, looked up at me and started yelling all over again, and that was the first time I realized that the burning hair I smelled was probably mostly my own. I don’t know if it happened back when Ricky was waving the paddle, or when I pushed him over, or when Hugo ran into me, or when I got his jacket up over his head, but it happened sure enough, and I reacted faster than I thought, and went to stick my head in the same puddle I’d pushed Ricky into earlier.

When I came to, my head hurt pretty bad, and it looked like a whole lot had happened while I was out. Jimmy, who was in the best shape of any of us, laid it out for me. When I knocked Ricky into the puddle, he tossed the paddle on his way down, and that’s how the grass in the yard caught fire. What I didn’t know was how uncommonly deep that puddle was, which is why Ricky’s aunt had taken to tossing in things like busted cinder blocks and rocks to try and fill it, and Ricky must have hit one of them, which is why two of his teeth were missing, and his chin was all bloody, but he had actually gotten cleaned up pretty good by the time I heard the story, because there were two ambulances there by then, and they said if they hurried they could probably get one of Ricky’s teeth back in place, but the other one was down in that puddle somewhere, or he had swallowed it, so one of the ambulances left with Ricky in it. I must have hit another one of those blocks myself, which is why I took that little nap, and my eye stung a bit from the blood running into it, but they said I was lucky because someone rolled me out of that puddle before I drowned in it, and I guess that must have been Jimmy, because Hugo was just hugging his knees and rocking back and forth while Jimmy told me all this.

Hugo didn’t even get the worst of it, and one of the firemen said that was probably thanks to my quick actions, even though I told him my actions was so quick I wasn’t even rightly sure what they’d been. Hugo’s jacket was sure gone though, and as Jimmy told me all this, I realized that after I got it off of Hugo, we must have dropped it in the barn as we ran back out. I don’t know if it was that jacket, or Hugo running around in there before I got to him, but between all the straw and cow shit that had been drying up for four or five years, there was plenty to catch fire, and plenty of old barn wood to hold it, and Jimmy said it had been really something to watch, and I wished I could’ve seen it, but by then it was mostly smoldering and steaming from all the water those fire trucks had put on it, but the barn was definitely gone, and so was Hugo’s jacket, and we were all pretty glad it’d been so long since any animals had been in there.

Jimmy looked like he was mostly ok, just that little red spot on the bridge of his nose and another on his forehead, but the firemen said that wasn’t nothing more than a sunburn, and that he’d be ok, and that my hair would probably all grow back in just fine, but that I might want to wear a nice soft hat for a couple weeks. We all got grounded for a while, some of us more than others, and Ricky’s not allowed to play with matches, and Ricky’s momma asked Jimmy to not tell Ricky any more of that sciencey stuff, since he don’t know well enough to not burn down barns with ping pong balls, but the good news is the table was ok, so we can all get together and work on our game a little bit as soon as we buy a new paddle and a couple more ping pong balls.
12-15-11
A college chemistry prof, with remarkably little forethought, once told our class that ping-pong balls would burn.  I never tried it, but mentioning it to a friend led to a discussion which led me to this tragic tale.