Some People Live in the Matrix. I Live in a Hadron Collider.

Posted in Astronomy, Communication, emotions, experiments, Humor, Physics, Science, Spring, Survival by Shelley Sackier

It has been a crummy month.

I have had more balls thrown at my head, more rugs pulled from beneath me, and more Charlie Brown and Lucy football moments in this short space of time than an Amazon warehouse has isles.

One wretched thing after another has befallen where I find myself looking up into the ether and wondering if it would be easier to find the nearest cliff to leap off, or if I should just become a comedian and work out all my trauma on stage like everybody else.

Also, my beautiful, newly installed woodstove has become a deathtrap for bluebirds. Countless feathered friends have been falling down the great length of pipe, fluttering for hours in the dark with no place to get a footing until, exhausted, and like Augustus Gloop, who fell into Willy Wonka’s chocolate pond and got sucked through a body-hugging pipe, the birds find a way to squeeze themselves through tiny crevices and make their way into the glass encased box of the wood stove itself. And there they sit. Panicked. Anxious. In wholly unfamiliar territory. And they have no idea how to escape.

I have called my woodstove company—these feeling, and oh-so-brilliant installers I have written about in the past—who have simply laughed at the number of phone calls they’ve gotten in just one week over this very same issue.

Why is there not some form of wiring around the cap of the chimney? I ask.

Well, cuz that’d be bad for the health of the chimney, they state.

And what of the health of the bluebirds? I add.

I can hear them tsk. Yer just gonna have to find a way to communicate to them that what they’re doing is stupid.

I sigh.

I count fifteen avian rescues I have made this week alone and reflect on how one of the main contributing factors to my terrible-horrible-very bad-no good month has been the inability to communicate some of the most basic, necessary, and essential needs I required.

If I couldn’t do it for myself, how would I presume to do it for others?

I marvel at the irony that my life’s work sits firmly beneath the umbrella of communications and yet my transmissions are received as garbled, twaddling claptrap. I am a writer, an educator, and an editor. I work with language all day long, and yet I have fallen flat on my face and repeatedly taste the same snoutful of dirt, always lifting my head, blinking around bewilderingly, wondering how the hell I’ve landed here again.

I reach carefully into the woodstove and put my hands around a tiny, terrified bundle of fluff. I feel it whiffling about between my enclosed fingers. I release it through an open window and say after it, Don’t make the same mistake twice. And then, moments later, there is another bird—surely not the same bird—flapping and frantic, coming down the pipe.

I go outside to look at the chimney.

Ye see, the indifferent installer lectures me on the phone, the idiot birds are damn straight positive they should be making a nest in that there tiny space up top. They think it’s the right thing to do.

All month long I had been positive I was doing the right thing too, but just like the bluebirds, I kept falling down the pipe.

What was it that made both the birds and me fail to see the futility of our actions and the physical and mental harm we were putting ourselves through?

Was it trusting our instinct? Allowing a bypass of brains to follow a simple responsive reflex? Was it relentless and unquestioning doggedness?

Maybe we were all testing Einstein’s famous quote describing insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” But lots of smart people do that. And they do that for their jobs. Because this is how the world actually works. Physicists smash the very same particles together repeatedly—trillions of times over—in a precisely repeated fashion, and guess what? The results are not the same. They are vastly different. Physicists are not insane.

I am not insane.

My bluebirds are not insane.

Perhaps, we all live in a giant collider, where in the world of quantum physics—the land where the bluebirds, the physicists, the particles, and I apparently live—we are playing under the rules that chaotic randomness and wild variability are the norm.

Maybe in this landscape, there is a chance that I will express a string of words that will deliver the exact meaning they are intended to present. Maybe in this realm, the bluebirds will discover that nestbuilding in a springtime chimney is a brilliant decision under certain realities.

In some scientific circles, the argument is not one defending the accusation of insanity, rather the complaint of not having full access to reality.

Suddenly, I am wrenched back to a very shrill state of consciousness where I see my cat, who I SWEAR I’d locked in another room, come dashing across my feet, a squeaking tweetstorm of flapping feathers in her mouth. A chase ensues up the stairs, under the bed, and into a corner, where I finally snatch the poor songbird from the literal jaws of death.

I soothe the tiny creature and take it outside where, waiting for it to catch its breath, I whisper, I’m sorry. For both of us. But this certainly sheds light on one bit of controversial science. Obviously, we did not prove Schrödinger’s alive or dead cat question, but I do feel we’ve cracked the back of existing parallel universes, as I swear that animal is still locked away in my office. So, there’s hope for us yet.

Which is when the bird turns to look me in the eye and say, They call ME crazy, but you’re the one holding out for a Netflix comedy special.

~Shelley

For the time being, the blog is closed to comments, but if you enjoyed it, maybe pass it on to someone else. Email it, Facebook it, or print it out and make new wallpaper for the bathroom. If it moves you, show it some love and share. Cheers!

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

29Jan2023

The Art of Literally Taking Stock

Posted in Business, Computers, death, experiments, Humor, Orginization, Resolutions by Shelley Sackier

I know many people look at January as a fresh start—the beginnings of new habits, the shedding of old ones, and the promise of a brighter, shinier version of themselves—that is, if most things stick on the list of I’m-serious-about-it-this-year resolutions.

But January has adopted a new meaning for me over the last couple of years simply because I’ve taken over a task no one at work is terribly thrilled to be assigned.

Inventory.

I’m absurdly delighted when faced with the challenge of organizing—of tackling chaos and wrestling it into neat rows of tidy “make sense” portions. Cupboards, pantries, file cabinets—I’ll orchestrate any item with the same military fervor Captain von Trapp had for queueing up offspring.

The snag is that my goods to groupify are not errant children, and the gap left in their absence does not allow me to tenderheartedly sigh and roll my eyes with slight amusement that a bottle, a case, or a barrel of whiskey has wandered off and is likely still up in its bedroom, wholly caught up in a drossy bit of literary drivel.

Instead, there are a couple of weeks of high anxiety, raised eyebrows, and countless vexed but ludicrous searches that include scouring closets, lifting stacks of paper, and requesting people empty their pockets. In the end, most of those absent cannot be categorized as truly AWOL—more like absent without the official paying attention to her spreadsheet.

Sometimes we just have too much stuff. Or perhaps, in my case at work, we have too much stuff that isn’t bolted to the ground behind barred holding cells.

Coincidentally, my library sent me a book suggestion at precisely the same time I was fretfully reckoning inventory. It is called: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.

Disturbing, for sure, but curiously poetic, perhaps.

After reading a review of the book, I’m not sure I’d categorize it as art, or event gentle, but cleaning before you kick the bucket with the bucket you’re soon to kick is pretty accurate. Maybe it’s a Swedish translation thing?

Maybe the meta quality is what appeals to me but being as practical and word obsessed as I am, I would likely change the title to If You Can’t Eat It, Drink It, or Read it, Toss it.

Or better yet, How to Start Losing Your Shit and Have People Thank You for It.

And again, having been raised in the hard-nosed and utilitarian kingdom of the Mid-West, my people would definitely see value in this idea. Of course, many of them are Swedish, so we’re tilting the scale a bit here too.

As I see it, January is a month where myriad people try on the activity of shedding. Whether it’s weight, bad habits, or toxic relationships—why not start combing through the clutter too, right? Dostadning is the Swedish word that blends death and cleaning, although maybe there should be a “pre” thrown in there for good measure and clarity. Hard to reach corners are even harder to reach from the inside of a coffin, right?

And even though I’m a massive fan of spring cleaning no matter the season, the Swedish concept adds a new layer of consideration and thoughtfulness to the activity: do it now so your kids don’t have to. Although, in my case, it might be better stated as do it now because your kids won’t—they’ll just “accidentally” torch it and take the insurance loss.

I don’t want to leave my offspring with feelings of resentment once I’ve shuffled off this mortal coil, and I certainly don’t want to leave them with a dozen boxes of high school memorabilia, drawers full of obsolete electrical cords from my Commodore 64 and Atari 7800 console, and that shed full of traffic cones, chamber pots, candle nibs, and “Do Not Disturb” signs from every hotel I’ve ever visited. I’d prefer to leave them each a heartfelt hand-written note, their favorite meal prepared and labeled in the freezer, and enough Tupperware with matching lids to last a lifetime. I imagine with this type of forethought, they would at least raise a toast to my ability to properly assess their busy lives and needs.

So, I have decided to start dostadning this month. I will work to rid myself of files, of furniture and of films that only run on archaic VCR players. I will purge my closet of garments from junior high, my drawers of mismatched socks, and my cabinets of the grass clippings that were once pungent herbs. I no longer need bed linens for bed sizes I do not possess, prom dresses from the 80s, or floppy discs that still might hold banking data from banks that have long ago shuttered.

Hell, I may even shed three letters from my name, as they’re superfluous as well.

We’ll see.

It’s the act of tidying up that aids the pursuit of simplicity—of giving space to only things that still serve you. Yes, it’s the Marie Kondo-ing exercise, and it likely exists in every culture.

No doubt we can all see the benefit of lightening not only our daily load but also the hefty responsibility we pass on to those we leave behind. There is also no doubt that my employer would prefer I not classify missing valuable liquor as the gentle art of Swedish death cleaning, as he will quickly Marie Kondo my ass right out of employment and feel sparkling joy in his own act of KonMari.

For now, I’ll keep working at hunting for the full bottles, and tossing out the empties.

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

1May2022

Problems with One’s Nose: It Just Doesn’t Make Scents

Posted in deprivation, emotions, experiments, food, Health, Humor, Medicine, Nature, Science, Sense of smell by Shelley Sackier

I think we can all agree—that whether you’ve experienced it firsthand or not—having Covid is no fun.

I can’t think of any illness that would actually fit into the “fun” category, so perhaps the above statement is a bit of a no-brainer declaration.

Still … there is an aspect of this affliction that is forcing me to do something I do find to be pleasurable—research—as I (along with millions of other humans) are desperate to determine when, if ever, our sense of smell will return to our bodies.

The symptoms of SARS-CoV–2 are dizzying, to be sure—one of them including experiencing dizziness. That evidentiary concurrence aside, other symptoms include the typical sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, so you can’t rest for lack of medicine annoyances. Some of these ailments arising to the level of not just vexing irritations but life-threatening pathologies.

The non-life-threatening, but definitely life-depressing disorder of anosmia—or smell blindness—is a fairly reliable indicator for the Average Joe lacking an at home Covid test to determine if they have been infected with this miserable and unrelenting virus. As an individual whose job relies upon her sense of smell, I long ago created a list of all maladies of the disease that I knew might reliably express themselves and highlighted in yellow and then orange and then pink the one that I absolutely, under no circumstances could tolerate. And then promptly began agonizing over its possible appearance until, I’m guessing, my brain finally took to heart all those self-help, yogi meditations I spent years fostering and “manifested” my thoughts into intentions.

Here you go. You think it, you become it.

The loss of smell for most people is dispiriting—especially if you’re a human who likes to eat.

The loss of smell for a person who is surrounded by hundreds of small alcoholic vials filled with aromatic compounds that are no longer aromatic is panic-inducing, terrorizing, and humbling in a collapse into a puddling heap on the floor type of way.

What now? Is the question of the day, although it really wasn’t a daily query as much as it became an hourly one.

So much of my life’s work is dedicated to identifying odorants—the good the bad and the ugly. They’re all incredibly fascinating to me and important to the labors I’ve been employed to pursue. I have never taken my ability to smell for granted—in fact, I’ve protected its presence and fostered my olfactory skills like a zealot chasing after the title of “Olympic medalist” in that category.

I walk into a room and the first things I notice are the odorants—the primary, the secondary, the tertiary. Has someone burnt toast? Has a dog passed gas? Is that woman wearing the same scarf from yesterday when she slipped outside into the alley to have a quick cigarette?

I walk into a patch of someone else’s presence and can oftentimes flesh out a rhinal history. The cologne they wear, the detergent they use, the curry they ate. It’s a Sherlockian mystery that unfolds itself one odorant at a time.

And now it’s gone. Poof.

Coincidentally, two weeks ago, I noticed a side-effect to a new medication I’m on which revealed that I may experience hyperosmia—an increased sensitivity to odorants. Hot diggity, I thought. A dream come true, right? Until I’d been stuck in a car with a person who, whenever speaking, gave off the exhalating perfume of someone who had perhaps dined on the soup made from the sewer on a hot August day. It wasn’t their fault. Their stomach was appropriately breaking down breakfast with the human chemicals assigned to that job—it’s just that it felt like I was in that organ with them.

Being on the opposite ends of the scent spectrum in such a short period of time provides—along with a bit of whiplash—an opportunity to experience the edges, to assess this bodily sense with the effect of a volume dial. Too much and you whirl with nausea, too little and life becomes monochrome—a dull gray, monotony that snatches away all color, absconds with your anticipation, and tosses you into a steeply descending pit of “why bother?” (Or, at least, for me it did.)

I have a phrase—a formula—I use to describe a concept when teaching on developing the skills of nosing and tasting: scent + taste = flavor.

Scent involves our olfactory epithelium—a small patch of tissue high in the nasal cavity that houses around 400 of our body’s olfactory receptors. When aroma molecules attach themselves to the receptors—either singularly or in combination with others—we can identify somewhere between 100 million to 1 trillion different odorants.

Taste is defining sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami compounds.

Putting the two together is how we experience flavor. Strip one away and the pow and wow factor of food is crippled. Hamstring both and you’re left with … what??

If I allow my freaked out, blubbering inner doomsayer to answer that question, it would be search for a cliff tall enough to leap from. If I am to respond more appropriately, more hopefully, more like an individual who gravitates toward solid science than pointless hysteria, I would say, a not unsubstantial amount.

I am forced to hunt for the other. To seek out what else contributes to the sensory experience of flavor, as there are a few more things than one might expect to include.

Viscosity – a measure of thickness, glossiness, syrupiness, adhesion.
Chemesthesis – this occurs when the receptors on the skin react with a chemical placed upon them—where your mouth and nose are concerned, we have the examples of:
- Menthol (a cooling sensation—your toothpaste, gum, or minty herbs)
- Capsaicin (a thermal impression—your hot sauce, spicy peppers, or chili powders)
- Carbonation (a tingling of the receptors—think soda, sparkling water, fizzy champagne)
- Alcohol (a prickling phenomenon—might as well go for the gold and make it high proof)
Sounds – the oral and sonic experience that comes from the crunch of your sugar snap peas, the squeak of your cheese curds, the crackle of your potato chips, the smacking stickiness of your peanut butter, the effervescence of those Pop Rocks.
Temperature – No need to explain, you know the scale.
Mindfulness—It has been studied and believed that “expectation” contributes to flavor as well, as scent and taste stimulate the limbic system and ultimately stir up memories.

I cling to the fact that the nuances of what contributes to flavor is fairly rich with examples. And paying particular attention to the extra sensory “we’ve always been here, but you’ve just ignored us” elements highlights their contribution to an experience rich with stimuli.

Is it the same?

Nope. Not even close. For me, anyway.

Will it suffice?

It will have to. At least until biology rights itself, a stem cell transplant program is offered up by my GP, or Mark Zuckerberg finds a way to “meta” my olfactory receptors back into reality. But for now, I will sniff, sip, slurp, and swirl everything I find—to invite back into my brain, to welcome back into my realm, to appreciate with renewed vigor the one thing my mental health hinges upon.

Until all returns, I will remain annoyingly and worrisomely … scent-o-mental.

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

24Jun2017

Batteries, Boyfriends, and VW Bugs

Posted in College, experiments, Humor, Parenting, Storytelling, writing by Shelley Sackier

This last month I learned a few new things about cars:

Jump starting a car battery is dark and semi-dangerous magic nearly anyone can do.
Wrestling out and replacing certain car batteries is a little bit like squishing a bloated elephant into a shoebox.
YouTube can teach you how to do both and come out mostly alive on the other end of it.

It all started around the time finals were happening for most college students in my neck of the woods with my own college student up to her earballs in textbooks, tests, and giant tubs of Ben & Jerry’s. Nothing alleviates an overheated thermogenic thought process like two pints of Hazed and Confused on a daily basis.

I received a text from said college student’s boyfriend:

When’s the last time you started Chloe’s car?

I scratched my head. Six weeks ago? Eight? It didn’t really matter because that thing was dead. Like unrevivably dead. It would be like digging up Beethoven or Mahler or Schubert and fist pounding on their chests screaming, “NONE OF YOU HAVE FINISHED YOUR SYMPHONY NO. 10!”

Yeah, that kinda dead.

I texted back an emoji shrug.

I could hear Ben’s eyes roll to the back of his head, and I don’t blame them for doing so.

He finished off: I’m coming over with a new battery. It would be nice for her to have a working car when she gets home from school.

I agreed. I also thought that it didn’t really matter if all the car parts were functioning if one did not have money enough to fill it with “go juice.” It kind of puts you in a position where you’re All Hat No Cattle.

But they’re college kids. They’ll figure it out.

I was working at my desk when Ben popped in. “I’m here. I’ve got the battery. I’ll be in the garage.”

“Need help?” I asked.

“Nah. Easy peasy.”

Super. I could keep writing. And I did.

For about sixty seconds.

“Do you have any gloves?”

Got Ben gloves. Went back to writing.

For about sixty seconds.

“Flashlight?”

You betcha.

Work … sixty seconds.

“How bout a magnet?”

Search for magnet: Old toy boxes. Drawers. Next to credit cards, computer hard drives, people resting in my living room with pacemakers.

“Nope. Sorry.”

Ben shrugged. “Never mind. I’m sure that piece will fall out of the engine block eventually.”

I looked at Ben with eyebrows that reached to my hairline.

Back to work. I counted to sixty twice.

“How small are your hands?”

Oh dear lord. I pushed back from my desk. “Let me find some shoes.”

I entered the garage and saw Chloe’s little VW bug with its hood popped. A miniature PAC-MAN of motorcars. Ben, whose height most telephone poles will nod with deference to, was almost in a downward facing dog yoga pose, hovering over the engine block.

There was a lot of grunting going on, but it might have been coming from the bug, as whatever Ben was trying to tug out of it seemed super important for that little roadster to cling to.

Apparently, it sensed the ongoing, effortful labor of disassembly and finally decided to put up a fight. It’s a little bit like going to the dentist for one defunct tooth to be removed and when you finally have a moment of anesthetic clarity, hear, “Oh, good lordy there’s another one. Well, she really doesn’t need that guy for chewing anyway.”

Yes, I think in a blind panic, but what about for maintaining social norms like speaking without sounding like I’m an eight-year-old whose face just met a tree trunk after a bike crash?

“What can I do?” I asked.

Ben explained to me that we just needed to slide the battery into place and then voilà, back to work I go and he’s outta here. Easy peasy.

Except he was finding it just a teensy bit tricky to slide this particular battery into place.

“How come?”

He gestured at the ground which held oddly shaped bits of plastic, metal, screws, caps, and hoses. It looked like the car had thrown up onto the garage floor. “A lot of stuff had to come out in order to remove the battery.”

“I assume all that stuff is essential?”

Ben shrugged. “Yeah, it all has to go back.”

I looked at the disassembled engine parts. I really really hoped he remembered where all the bits and pieces originally lived because none of them were color-coated, or Post-it note labeled, and there were no IKEA directions to be found anywhere.

If it were me, I would have labeled everything with Garanimal tags—like the clothing line my mother used to buy for us when we were little kids. Each piece of clothing had some anthropomorphic animal code attached to it so you could find something that matched to make a set. Make sure the alligator shirt is not paired with giraffe shorts and then feel confident sending that child on off to school.

Yeah, there were a lot of things on the ground that looked like they needed to be remarried to their original partners.

“You’ve done this before, right?”

Ben flashed me a smile and held up his smartphone. “YouTube.”

Oh, good heavens.

For the next three hours we battled with that little bug, trying to slide, shove, inch, hitch, and bang that new damn battery into place. It was like trying to get a cat to swallow a pill. That battery refused to go down.

We, as instructed by the warning words of the World Wide Web, did not tip the battery. Which would have made things so much easier. At one point I suggested to Ben that if we couldn’t tip the battery, maybe we should tip the bug. Seriously. It would have been so much easier.

He did not agree.

At long last, we did manage to get that SOB back into place. In fact, we managed to do it twice, because after the first time—once we’d reconnected all hoses, screws, and pulleys—we discovered a small piece we’d left out on the garage floor. Something akin to an OR nurse tapping an open-heart surgeon on the shoulder just as he’s tying off the last stitch of flesh together and pointing to the pan that still held an essential organ.

But we did it.

Easy peasy.

~Shelley

This thing ready to go??

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

24Sep2016

Crashing and Burning; It Takes Practice

Posted in Education, experiments, Humor, NASA, Parenting, Space by Shelley Sackier

I think three of the most frightening and exciting words spoken together in the English language are: three, two, one.

And the space that comes right after it? The silence where we then announce the outcome? Talk about a pregnant pause. Talk about stress and hope and anticipation—and the new physical knowledge of the phrase gut twisting.

Sometimes you hear the word Liftoff!

Or Action! Or Go!

What nobody wants to hear is Three, two, one … uh oh.

But it happens. And it’s said. With a lot more regularity than many of us would believe—or admit to.

I think most of us regular folks can probably scare up a decent quote or two from marvelous, mind-blowing space moments, right? Things like:

“Uh, Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

Or “That’s one small step for man …”

Or “Failure is not an option.”

Or is it?

The whole failure thing, I mean.

Winston Churchill said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” I think the old British Bulldog would have loved to take a peek inside one of the many locations dedicated to our American aeronautics and aerospace research to see his words in action.

I’m talking about NASA, folks.

Space has long been an interest of mine. And parenting. I’m super dedicated to the act and art of parenting. Also writing. I can’t imagine my life without writing.

But this is where I’ll stop with that whole list because any further and it’s going to sound like I’m generating some sort of online dating bio—and that is not where this essay is heading.

It’s mostly about space and parenting. The writing part is simply my way of communicating to your eyeballs the beautiful connection between the two.

And they are connected. Magically. And ordinarily.

Okay, so actually, my interests are space, and parenting, and writing … aaaand failure.

Although there is some bewitching halo that’s thrown over the beautiful bubble of someone’s great achievement, there is nothing sparkling or spellbinding about a person’s failure. When seen up close, it’s usually unsightly and has us cringing but unable to turn away. A lousy result is a big pile of rubble we tend to shove underneath the nearest sofa and not show our friends by outlining it on the floor with glitter.

Failure hurts. It’s distressing and insufferable. It is your demanding and troublesome Aunt Gladys showing up on your doorstep and expecting attention and accommodation forthwith.

You cannot turn her away. She is there. Staring you down with two leather satchels in her hands expecting a cushioned chair and a hot cup of tea immediately. The only thing one can do in a situation like this is …

Prepare for it.

NASA rehearses for surprise Aunt Gladys visits relentlessly and gravely. When every single penny of your budget is scrutinized, questioned, and arm-wrestled for and, more important, when human lives are a big wager in the game, you cannot afford a whoopsie poo from out of the blue.

Last month, I went to pick up my daughter from her summer internship with God—or rather, her god—at one of NASA’s facilities. She was building space rockets—well at least that’s what chose to believe because every time I asked what she was up to she rolled her eyes and reminded me about this little piece of paper she signed called a non-disclosure agreement.

This is a euphemism for the phrase, tell anyone what you’re up to and we’ll slice off your legs at the kneecaps.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t entirely that bad, but it was close. Maybe they’d only slice off her legs at the ankles, but she really wasn’t budging.

Anyway, I was given a glance at that amazing level of preparation NASA employs with its projects. Their walls were lined with pictures, graphics, renderings, and sketches of accomplishments and failures.

Yeah, you read that right. Failures.

I’m not saying it’s a gallery of shrapnel and explosions meant to terrorize and paralyze—it’s more like the “Mars Exploration Family Portrait.” There are a lot of pictures and footnotes that say, Stranded in Earth orbit, Crashed on surface, or Destroyed during launch.

How many of us would actually snap a selfie as we stand in front of an epic bungle and then nail it to the wall, poster-sized, right outside our office so that a couple dozen times a day we get to eyeball the lead balloon bombs that are our past?

I think not many of us.

But with each new person I met, read about, or simply saw beavering away in their government issued lung compressing cubicles that day, I began to wonder if maybe these people’s parents might have peppered their bedroom walls with exactly that kind of décor.

Not to be cruel. But to be … constructive.

Imagine this: right next to their American Mathematics Competition medal, their National Latin Exam Award certificate, and their Presidential Physical Fitness badge, there are two school exams—also pasted up on that wall. One is a Latin essay with whatever Latin words are the equivalent to this paper is atrocious scrawled across the top of it, and the other is a math exam with a big bold red F next to their name.

Next to that is a pink slip from Burger King with the explanatory words Malt machine too complicated for employee to master. This is just above a snapshot of a text reply to the request for a date revealing the response, Uh, Seriously? You’ve got to be joking.

Yep. Victories and defeats.

Achievements and downfalls.

Wins and washouts.

It is rocking horse manure rare to have one without the other. And yet as parents, we typically practice buffering our kids from these missteps and wrecks because …

Well … who wants to see our offspring suffer, or struggle, or return to us bleeding and holding out the handlebars of their new bicycle in one hand and three teeth in the other? Who routinely places their descendants in some Houdini hindrance and says, “Don’t forget to hold your breath,” just before their ears are submerged under water? Who leaps up from the bleachers and fist pumps the air, hollering, “I got it on tape!” to their kid who just did a major face plant onto the asphalt just as the one hundred meter dash shotgun went off and then explained to surrounding parents that the rest of the night was going to be spent watching that film a thousand times and taking notes?

It’s just not something we regularly do.

But NASA does.

And I vote NASA raises our kids from now on.

I know that sounds a bit extreme, and I’m not saying we just shove them all over their security gate in the middle of the night, dust our hands of the whole situation and then drive home.

No.

We can visit.

We’ll gauge their progress and applaud their efforts. We can wander the facilities hallways and see their scrubs and scratches, identifying the technical names for efforts that had to be scrapped because NASA has an abort procedure for everything: pad, launch, ascent, in-flight, and even the one everybody wishes they had in their car for an annoying passenger—ejection. Some plan for every phase of the course lest something goes wrong. And it will.

Our kids don’t have to stay there very long. Just until they get the hang of the new mindset, this unusual framework for their labors.

And that framework is: You will get it wrong. And then you get it right. Errors are normal. Mistakes are natural. Failure is fated. But what it doesn’t have to be is THE END.

In no short amount of time, they’ll be well rehearsed for life.

I know it can work. I heard the setup after I’d dropped my daughter off at the beginning of the summer. This was gist of the conversation:

Mentor: “Here’s what I want you to do. Make blank do blank.” *

Daughter: “Umm … That’s not very specific.”

Mentor: “Don’t I know it. That’s life. Now off you go.”

Results? Plenty. Loads of them. Usable ones? Not so many. Lots of failures. An endless amount. Embarrassing ones, time consuming and hugely frustrating ones.

Except one.

And really, truly, ultimately—that is the point. Don’t fall at the first hurdle.

Because what people often misunderstand is that right up until the moment of the wreck is not a colossal waste of time or effort. The result may be called failing, but the rest … is called learning.

There’s a lot to be said for scars and skinned knees. Our war wounds can be epic and extraordinary tales. They show we’ve done battle and that we made it through to the other side. They can prepare and instruct and inspire our kids to reach for the stars.

To fly to the moon. To land on Mars.

And maybe more important, to come back again.

~Shelley

*(sigh … nondisclosure agreement thingie)

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Don’t forget to check out what we’re cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all talked about down in the pub. Plus, you can see more of Robin Gott‘s humor–all from the only pen carved from a human funny bone.