THE OLD MICROSCOPE

Every time I looked through a microscope, it looked like this picture. Or it was black because my eyelashes got smashed up against the lens.

I really liked to examine paramecium up closely, but they never wanted to expose themselves to me. They stayed as hidden as the scores in the teachers' gradebooks. And after every lab practical I ever had, mine went down even more.

Since I left Dr. Andy Hall school, science and I didn't get along. My homeroom teacher in junior high was a science teacher, a basketball ref, a genuine good guy. But he allowed all kinds of animals to roam around the classroom, and as much as I liked them, they would stink up the whole room. Plus there was a big kid in there that always wanted to beat me up for some reason. That was the only time all day I saw him, but it didn't make me yearn for good old Mr. Morris' classroom.

I had excellent science teachers in junior high, but my grades didn't match my interest. I remember no lab practicals, but I do recall the microscopes that others seemed to have no problem seeing neat stuff in. It was so bad that I acted as if I saw what I was looking at.

High school and college science classes did little to raise my GPA, although with the exception of the worst science class ever taught at SIU--Weather, where for the entire quarter we studied the water table in Viet Nam, most all held my interest. Physical sciences though I tried to avoid because my math skills eroded when they stopped using numbers and relied too heavily on symbols and sines and stuff that I thought I would never use or encounter in the real world. On a lifetime of reflection to look back on, I was right.

But I think I might have won a Nobel by now if I had been able to see in a microscope. Maybe the Nobel is reserved for our Prez. I guess a Curry would do for me.