A Floating Sub And Chemistry Chaos 101 from Where In The World Is Hollywood Avenue? by Debra Faye Odom Bowen on Wednesday, July 4, 2012 at 9:11pm Now I will be the first one to tell you, that after Arithmetic, Science was my next worse subject. Not that I didnt give it a go. I signed up for Physical Science for the ninth grade, Biology 1, my Sophomore year and that was that. I had a minor in Science and that was good enough for me.I just wanted Science to know it didnt get the best of me,OR was I really afraid of the prospects of repeating a similiar incident at school as I had at home in the ole Chemistry Department? I close my eyes and let my memory take me back to about 1967. It was summer and many of my Hollywood Avenue friends had either moved or gone on vacation. There I was bored out of my mind.I was under Mary Nells foot every time she turned around and she told me I needed to find some way to amuse myself. Big mistake! I went to the little closet where they stored my toys and, lo and behold, I found the old toy submarine they had purchased for me from Woolworths a while back. It came with tablets that you placed in a special compartment and when you put it in water it would float for a bit before submerging to the bottom of the pool. It was one of the coolest toys I had ever owned but Alas! I was out of sub tablets.Then the old gears between my ears started to turn and I thought to myself, Surely we have something here at the house that would work just as well. I took my sub and went into the kitchen of house #6 and laid it in the sink. Now, if I remembered correctly the tablets were white ,kind of like baking soda, so I put a little bit of that in a cup along with some of mommas detergent with blue specks, because I was pretty sure the tablets had blue specks in them, or maybe green. I also remembered them smelling a little like vinegar, so I put in a little of that in the cup which caused the concoction to bubble up. Ah, almost perfect. I need one more thing to make it just right as I reached for the bleach bottle. I knew the moment it went in the cup I had added one ingredient too many. Mary Nell came running into the kitchen as I poured it down the drain saying What are you doing? We have got to get out in the air now! A pungent odor as I had never smelled before was hung up in my nose and would not turn me loose!After a little while out in the fresh air I could breathe again. What in Sam Hill were you trying to do girl, blow us all to smitherins? Mary Nell shouted as she was setting my back side on fire with a spanking.I was just trying to make my submarine sink. I managed in a choked reply. Well you almost sunk us all. Debi you cant just mix any chemical together, because some can make noxious fumes like the ones you made today. We were lucky this time.You could have gotten real sick, died,or blown us all up! With that, she took my submarine and chunked it in the garbage.That day I decided a career in the Navy or as a Scientist would not be in my future.Of course when momma and daddy got home from work, I heard it all again. I was never so glad to be rid of a toy as I was that Sub. By the time December had come around that year, my submarine fiasco had been forgotten and I was ready for Santa to make his late night ride to our house. One night,as we were getting ready to sit down for supper, which we were accustomed to eating around seven o clock, we heard a knock on the door. Evelyn and Robert had dropped by with cousins Randy and Cindy to bring my Christmas gift. Back then, when someone brought you a gift, you opened it right away instead of waiting until Christmas morning, so they could see the expression on your face. It was a large rectangular package. What could it be? I thought to myself. To this day, I would give anything for a photo of momma and Mary Nells faces, as I unwrapped my gift to find none other than, A CHEMISTRY SET! OH LORD! they both sang in unison, as Robert and Evelyn smiled like two Chesire cats,while I anxiously leafed through the instruction booklet to see which experiment I wanted to do first.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 02:02:52 +0000
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