It's a Bird! It's a Plane! IT'S THE REMOTE CONTOL!

I have seen so many grimaced faces when "physics" is mentioned, that at some point I started believing I had actually majored in the subject and hated it, too.  So when I signed up for a Physics class this week, I mistakenly thought I was taking a refresher.

I was eight when my first real physics lesson happened at the fat end of a Wiffle Ball bat. Wiffle balls were the brainchild of parents who'd had enough of the broken windows caused by regular baseballs, so they invented something that could only break their cheap stuff.  The oddly shaped plastic bat that sent the Wiffle ball flying would also - if swung just so against a car hood - have enough momentum to hit the person swinging it between the eyes.  Twice.  I've heard.

That is precisely the moment a smart person should appear to inform all onlookers that they're witnessing physics in action!  And the way their bodies convulse with laughter?  More physics!

The only real physicist I've ever known is my friend David.  He's so smart it's scary, but he's real nice and never makes me feel dumb.  He'll tell me just enough about the Universe so that my eyes don't dry completely out, but I'm guaranteed to have much more pleasant dreams than my usual Gilligan's Island nightmares.

David worked on some kind of refrigeration unit that was sent into outer space for testing.

Or something.

I was surprised by all the information in this week's Physics Class.  (Not Wiffle-Ball-Bat surprised, but still - pretty surprised.)  I'd stashed a few Keep Awake distractions in my backpack just in case, but everything - including the HoHos - were still in their wrappers when I left for home.

I learned that Einstein was an island unto himself, meaning he used very few citations in his work.  I did not learn what 'citation' meant back then, but I'm thinking he did not loiter or violate speed limits.

Maxwell, a mathematician from Scotland, developed the concept of 'fields' to unite electrical theories, but all I remember is that his middle name sounds like "Clark" and is spelled "Clerk."

A guy named Michaelson trained at Annapolis before measuring the speed of candlelight moving in different directions.  A German guy named Planck (pronounced "Plonk" - what is it with scientists?) was interested in the theory of heat, so he went ahead and put the Quantum in Quantum Physics.

I do not even understand how my toaster works.

But the most interesting story, about a guy named Newton, was also the most familiar.  My mind went immediately to that shot of him relaxing under a tree, eating an illegal apple - no, wait - that was Adam and Eve - this guy was reading a book and got hit by a gravitational apple.  Big difference.

I think the apple part is what confused me for years, obscuring the fact that Newton was not around at the beginning of time.  I should have put that two-plus-two together from the wrinkled blousy shirt he wore over those brown pants that were tucked into his big-buckled boots.

Adam and Eve wore plants.

Newton survived his awkward teenage years, but was only 22 when a Big Plague hit England.  He couldn't go outside - and Nintendo was a few years off - so he invented calculus.  Then he riffed off everybody else's stuff, explaining Copernicus's theory about planets revolving around the sun and Keppler's theory of elliptical orbit.

Then he went ahead and developed the theory of "force" after rearranging furniture for the hundredth time and writing letters to every budding microbiologist pal trapped in their homes working on ways to help fellow earthlings survive the plague.

Those guys knew how to handle boredom.

I have developed a theory about why today's 22-year-olds play Grand Theft Auto instead of inventing more science:  If those kids from the past had just slowed down a little - we would still have stuff to invent.  They were so intent on figuring out the exact distance to the moon that today's youngsters don't have a reason to wonder about anything.

Oh, wait.  How to explain my friend David?  All theories discussed in today's class had been floated and validated and big trophies had already been awarded at whatever kinds of dinner parties they had in the 1500s - but David still wonders about lots of things.

A few years ago he explained (in my language) Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  Apparently, there is an unsolved mystery there and I said I'd go ahead and figure it out in my spare time.  This made David laugh, but I got the distinct feeling he believed on some level that I could do it.

I learned in class about a gentleman named Hippolyte Fizeau (incredibly, pronounced as spelled) who hauled mirrors up a giant mountain to measure the speed of light.  Thanks to Mr. Fizeau, I know that the light I see from a star is the same light I'd see if I ever got close enough to hold hands with it.  But like so many other messages, it gets a little diluted on its way to me.

I'm still working on the Einstein thing, but my research is easily bogged down by distractions I'm blaming on every scientist who came before me.  I drive my automatic car home after work, take dinner from the freezer, heat it in the microwave, find a ballgame on television, use my cell phone to check for emails, then write a little on my laptop before turning out the lights and hopping into bed.  Thanks a lot, guys with funny names!

Same sun.

Same moon.

Same 24 hours for solving questions that arise in the time we stop to sit and think.  If a giant technological virus causes the next Big Plague, what would we choose to invent again?

Maybe we'd reinvent communication.  That's where all the practice I've given my friend David will really pay off.

He can start us back on the right path by instructing his physicist friends in a class called "How to Explain Anything to Anybody."

(Want that wind-blown look without the flashy-convertible expense?  Um, no.  No, you don't.  I've got real-life motorcycle information for you here next Friday.)

Does This Attitude Make My Ego Look Fat?

Back when I lived in St. Louis, my friend Terri and I occasionally visited a bar called Attitudes after work.  Our evening shifts in ICU meant we didn't arrive until midnight, so we only had two hours for our Attitude Adjustment.  It was almost always enough.

A few of the patrons' attitudes occasionally adjusted in the wrong direction and there'd be a scuffle, but the music was so loud we often had no clue a fight was even brewing.  We'd squint across the dance floor or pool table or bathroom line, nodding mutely at people who appeared to be screaming.  Raucous laughter usually ensued, but if the inaudible rant ended with a fist swinging at anybody's head - you knew it was a fight.

The owner, Roxanne, always helped the fist-swinging girls adjust those attitudes on the street.  "Be nice, or else!" she'd yell as she tossed them outside.

I recently signed up for an Attitude Development class because even friendly people need occasional attitude tweakages, and I've not lived in St. Louis for quite a while.  While it's not a potential post-retirement hobby, a good attitude just makes everything a little better.

With the notable exception of this particular class.

It was held in an old downtown library with marble staircases and glass-walled meeting rooms on the second floor.   The total stranger gatherings all looked alike, so I stuck my head in one door and learned it was a writing group.  Fun!  I asked what kind of writing they did and was informed by a creepy woman that if I had qualified for this group, I would have received an invitation.

That hurt.  So I offered her an invitation to the Adjust-Your-Attitude class if I ever found it.  I stomped away under the watchful glare of every other group.

I found the right room and tried coaxing my attitude back onto its happy perch, but it was demanding I leave.  I stayed - believing the instructor would understand better than most people how to be nice.

Silly me.

There were only two other classmates, and it was plain that neither had smiled for at least a decade.  The teacher mentioned a fourth attendee who had gone to move her car and was "probably not coming back."

This worried me a lot.  Were she and her car impounded?  Was she eaten by the writing group?

I thought about moving my own car - back to my home where everything loves me.

My attitude laughed sarcastically.  We are totally fine, remember?  Being on display in an aquarium is fun!

I soon realized that I should have listened to whatever my attitude argues with so often - my instincts, maybe.  Because my attitude did, indeed, develop with everything that teacher said - but in the wrong direction.

Hearing the teacher's messages felt like taking a weird drug for a condition that isn't really a disease.  The weird drug must first give you the disease before proving that it can cure you.

The teacher announced that everybody with a bad attitude simply needed to stop worrying so much.  "There have always been wars and there will always be wars, so get over it."

My attitude adjustment began with both ears trying desperately to cover themselves before realizing they don't have hands.

I asked the obvious question.  Don't you agree that wars are caused by too much testosterone?

The teacher sneered.  His hormones sensed a challenge!

I worried that if I didn't offer a quick explanation, I'd be thrown to the writers.  (Although I felt certain this man could not actually lift me, I have always been mesmerized by those reports of rage-soaked, adrenaline-fueled, Volkswagen-tossers.)

I continued.  I just think if women ruled more countries, there would be less war.

Now the teacher laughed loudly.  "You show me one major country on this whole entire planet with a woman elected leader, and we'll have something to talk about!"

His logic, as well as his sentence structure, confused me almost as much as whatever the reason was for inventing testosterone in the first place.

Um, right.  My point exactly.  Thanks for clearing that up.  At least my attitude was not ignoring its entire supply of polite just yet.

He ignored me and went on.  "And there's always gonna be hungry children in the world, so you can't cure everything for everybody."

I felt my ears actually start growing their own hands, but was able to stop them before they got past the wrist stage.  I blinked a lot - not to hold back the tears that girls always cry as proof that they can't lead the world.  I blinked because my eyelashes thought the words were actually flying directly at them, as fully formed as any bits of toxic debris ever spewed from any inanimate factory on earth.

I stood slowly and smiled in a way that I hoped imparted Developing a Serial Killer's Attitude.

"What," the teacher said, "did I offend you again?  Is world hunger a man problem, too?"

My instincts wrestled my attitude to the mat and made me leave before I could take a swing at the teacher's head that would get us both tossed through eight panes of glass for an out-on-the-street adjustment.

I strolled calmly to Angry Writer Fishbowl with important information.  I just remembered a standing invitation with my desk, so I am going home to write whilst you chat amongst yourselves.

The building was just as beautiful on the way out, but all that marble seemed a little greedy.  Weren't there any hungry people in 1918?

A really nice security guard opened the front door as I left; the weapons on his belt confirmed my fear that fights really do break out in libraries.  But when I thanked him for keeping everybody - including the people on the second floor - safe, I stopped worrying.

My original attitude was intact.

I gave him my friendliest smile, intent on bolstering his precious supply of Be Nice, or Else.

That stuff goes so fast when you're dealing with strangers.

(Ever wonder why anybody even cares whether a pound of feathers or a pound of lead would hit the ground first?  Not me!  I took a Physics class and will explain the whole deal next Friday.)

Dogpaddler Down! (Venturing Into the Creativity Gene Pool)

My least favorite subject in grade school was Art Day.  Sure, it only lasted 50 minutes, but it felt like a 12-hour shift every time.  Other kids loved marching down that long hallway for torture every Tuesday, but even though Walter Cronkite had recently announced the invention of lung cancer, I would have preferred to wait in the teachers' lounge during their Art Day smoke break.

Art Day was humiliating - they made me use just my imagination.  Nothing else.  Except paints, markers, rolls of butcher paper, glue, cotton balls, crayons, macaroni, pipe cleaners, tape, yarn, and one ton of multi-colored glitter the principal shoveled from a dump truck on Mondays.  But that WAS IT.

Adding insult to injury, I was born into a family of professional artists who could sculpt mashed potatoes into something so beautiful it made me weep.  I sculpted a perfect brontosaurus in sixth grade, but when Mr. Amadio opened the shoebox littered with clay pebbles and toothpicks he asked if I had thrown it off the bus.

I had not.

I accidentally drew a perfect reindeer in second grade for the Christmas mural.  When my older sisters stopped by for a private viewing, they piled on tons of praise while my teacher tried catching anybody's eye to wink.  She only caught mine.  I still blame that hex for the perfect reindeer's sleigh-pulling partner I drew later that day.  He resembled an angry cigar with way too many legs.

(On, Dancer!  On, Stogie!)  Santa got a 'handicap' sticker that year.

But our school district allowed something fun during Art Day twice a year - CRAFT HOUR.  The biggest stressor that day was whether my hand could shoot up fast enough for a leatherworking kit.

I usually ended up with those colorful, spongy loops intent on becoming hot pads.  Mom used the hot pads faithfully, even though the spongy loops panicked and fled to one side as the oven door opened - leaving a clear path for Mom's fingers to go on ahead and check the REAL temperature of that casserole dish.

When they were laundered they became little padlets - still capable of squishing to one side, but that talent wasn't necessary.  Even Mom's tiny hands could only manage to keep two fingers and part of each thumb on the spongy padlets.  Those dinners flew into the dining room with Mom in hot pursuit, hoping to aim the flaming goods in the general direction of the table.

When I signed up for today's Introduction to Leatherwork I had hoped some natural talent might shine through since my father owned a saddlery when I was young.  He made saddles and chaps and bridles - each piece cut from large pieces of leather, then tooled and dyed and laced...

Here I must admit that I have no idea about the actual process.  It was just the job he went to every day.

My class started off without Art Day flashbacks from the years when eight-year-olds licked paintbrushes to set off a screamy teacher.  Today's instructor was so nice!  He had a real passion for leatherwork and actually believed the rest of us could, too.  I made sure to shake his hand early on so he'd notice all ten of my thumbs before I picked up the giant leather-pounding mallet.

But I was not prepared for the way the leather smell made my throat a little lumpy with memories of the saddlery.  Or the way the wire-handled lambswool swabs dipped in earth-toned dyes made me blink a lot.

My sister Jenny and I logged many hours waiting for the saddlery to close if we hadn't taken the bus home from school.  We climbed on saddles, played 'Zorro' with fishing poles, and made bracelets out of shiny spurs.  I never asked Dad to show me what he was doing back at his workbench. 

There are no saddleries where I live now, so I didn't mention anything to my classmates today.  They would have seen me as the crazy lady who rattled on about a strange dream she'd had, instead of the crazy lady who suddenly realized a whole wealth of knowledge about leatherworking died less than a year ago.

We made two projects today.  There were no wallets, but that was just as well because the stamping part was harder than it looked and those kits had come pre-designed.

First I made a bracelet for my daughter Abi.  I must have known this day was coming when I gave that girl a name with three letters - they centered themselves perfectly.  (If she'd been christened Esmerelda, I would have invented the nickname Esi for her starting today.)  Then I got brave enough to use three different tools to create a design.  It made me sweat.

I stamped a buffalo into the front of a keychain for my sister Debby since she loves All Things Yellowstone.  I tap-tapped in a little design around the edge and thought I was done before noticing a stamp with a tiny eagle.  Dad loved eagles.  I wasn't brave enough to stamp it into the front, so I pounded its outline into the back.

But when I turned the keychain over, the eagle's shadow showed through on the front - right above the buffalo's head.

The teacher felt awful - he hadn't seen what I was doing or he would have stopped me.  He asked if I wanted to start over and offered to help me get it right.

What?  I loved the result - it was better than the Virgin Mary on a waffle!  I was thrilled that it still showed up after I slathered on green dye - and especially happy that I hadn't accidently stamped that eagle closer to the buffalo's rear end.

I'll not pretend I could ever recreate one tiny bit of whatever happened at that workbench in the saddlery.  And as a post-retirement hobby, this one would alienate most friends and family after approximately two rounds of Christmas gifts. 

But I left class with no glue in my ears, no glittery grit between my teeth, and my heart brimming with whatever the feeling is that's the exact opposite of humiliation.

Best Art Day ever.

(What causes a wronged person to chuckle melodiously instead of smacking someone upside the head?  Attitude!  Learn how to walk away - right here - next Friday.)

Size 10 Wide, Medium Rare

One great thing about families is the way they keep you alive until you're old enough to ask for nonpoisonous food.  As soon as we had fully cooperative vocal cords, my parents let us choose our own birthday dinner menu - a tradition that stuck until we somehow got access to information about lobster.

My birthday fell in December every year, but I always wanted a barbequed-sparerib-corn-on-the-cob cookout.  Our freezer held more wild game than tame pig, and frozen corn-on-the-cob had not yet been invented, so instead I had antelope-deer-elk-something, chocolate cake, and presents.

Yum.  Presents.

I have always loved barbeque, but I accidentally turned vegetarian in college because I could only afford Sugar Pops and generic beer.  (I was a slow learner where nonpoisonous foods were concerned.)

Whenever an unsuspecting Visitor Family strayed within fifteen feet of our dorm, we'd cram as many students as would fit into whatever they drove and help them find a restaurant offering the delectable "Any Food Not Served on Campus," delivering a rousing a capella rendition of the Cowboy Joe Fight Song at the tops of our lungs along the way.

We were ravenous, wildly uninformed tour guides.

If the restaurant served Barbequed Anything, I took a little Vegetarian Vacation.  And since germs had not yet been invented, I stashed leftovers on the shelf in my dorm room, obviating the need for Sugar Pops between teeth-brushing and my first class the next morning.

My first mistake was bringing a big, fat spiral notebook to this week's "Barbeque Legends" class.  When I signed up I thought it was story legends, as in:  Finally!  The true revelation of barbeque - bring the big, fat notebook!

I was way off. 

The Legends turned out to be two men who love to Barbeque Anything.  I dubbed them Quiet Legend and Loud Legend as they regaled us with lists of their accomplishments, including a disturbing Family Fact:  Their wives and children had moved out, unable to compete for space in the sea of trophies the Legends had won.

Our class met in Quiet Legend's garage, which opened onto a driveway lined on both sides with the hulking remains of several 55-gallon drums perched on metal legs.  Smoke wafted from the hulks, carrying the unmistakable smell of yum and a vague hint of presents.

It's a cooking class!  I retrieved my notebook from where I'd stashed it in mild embarrassment at my feet.  Everyone else had thought to bring their favorite lawn chair and something to catch the drool.

I opened it to the first big, fat page and wrote the heading:  Post-Retirement Hobby:  Becoming a Barbeque Legend.  I placed the first bullet point on the second line and looked up to find a shocking sight:  the largest uninterrupted piece of actual animal I'd seen since the last deer I hit on my way home from Red Canyon sometime in high school.

This carcass looked funny.  In high school they just looked like dollar signs plastered across dented hoods, but this one looked more like a person with weird feet.

A tiny squeak sounded.  I think it came from me.

One Legend stood over the most-of-an-animal with a small saw - saying words I couldn't hear over the buzzing in my eyeballs.  This cow had so recently been frolicking somewhere that I half expected it to hop off the comically large butcher block and continue frolicking down the driveway, flipping open hulking metal containers to free its buddies as it went.  All it needed was skin.

I wrote beside my first bullet point:  Please let there not be something cute in those smoking things.

When we lived in Phoenix, my girlfriend Joan and I went to a new seafood restaurant one night.  I asked our waiter about a dish called mahi-mahi.  He told me it was a dolphinfish.  I cringed.  Oh, no thanks, I could never eat Flipper.

The waiter laughed and said, "Oh, it's not that kind of dolphin.  It's a real ugly fish."

That perked me up.  Yay!  Okay, then, I'll have the mahi-mahi!

What - what - WHAT was that about?  I have thought of that night so often - especially when my daughter Abi was young and I needed a quick Mom Speech that riffed off the nobody-can-help-how-they're-born theme.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm in a barbeque class - praying there is something unattractive in the metal cookers.  I'm used to ordering restaurant barbeque, then looking confidently at my plate to find a bun looking back.  Animals love buns, right?  Sometimes the buns even have little sesame seeds.

I heard Loud Legend answer a classmate:  "Yes, you can put anything in the smoker and, given enough time, it will come out tender and juicy."

There is a story about a 15th-Century traveler who single-handedly invents veganism by tricking an entire village into contributing their meager vegetable stores for his Stone Soup.  In hobo camps, the main ingredient in the soup pot was somebody's boot.  I used to think it was the stone and the boot that made those stories sad, but the travelers and the hobos don't need meat.  They just need to hear, "It's your birthday!  Come home and tell us what you want."

The Legends asked if we had questions.  I closed my notebook.  The true revelation was that this post-retirement hobby would give me bad dreams.  I stared at my Birkenstocks, at one time cows themselves, and my hand shot up in spite of my feet's insistence that we just leave.

I asked the men why they don't live together.  I mean, paying two mortgages seems silly, and all animals need companionship.

They chuckled, mumbling something about room for their extensive collections of pig towels and dishes and statues and bottle openers and cookie jars....  It seems pig-knacks are those adorable things that keep you company after your family leaves.

I am still a slow learner, but have signed up for a class called "Raw Foods."  Perhaps it will bring clarity - but until then, living in Cowtown may be an especially aromatic challenge.

Bring on the ugly vegetables.

(Believe it or not, I have another class about cows next Friday - teaching you how to make beautiful, functional items from leftover scraps of hide.  I will be the star attraction in Bovine Hell!)