School became vastly more interesting in mid-November. The Science Fair was announced. Students could enter a project in the annual Science Fair, to be judged in the spring; it was expected of all the college prep crew to participate (read required) and optional for other students. It was open for individual students, or as teams of two.
Back when I did this the first time, I did it by myself, and took second place, with a project showing the effects of different radiation levels on the growth of barley plants from irradiated seeds. The first place winner was Mike Misner, who was a buddy in the college prep group. His project involved growing a bunch of fertilized chicken eggs in an incubator. Every day he would harvest an egg and place it in a jar in formaldehyde, showing fetal growth. The leftover eggs at the end of the project he hatched, so we had peeping chickens at the fair. Timing was everything. I had the better science, but let’s face it, peeping chickens make for great theater. Mike continued this field of endeavor, ending up as a pediatrician down in Annapolis.
I decided on better theater myself, but growing chickens in the house was out of the question. I had already decided to do a project on the tar in cigarettes. Randy Bronson did this the last time, using a vacuum pump to ‘smoke’ cigarettes and collecting the tar they generated. That was all he did, though, collect the tar. Adequate theater but lousy science. I figured I could dress it up and do better science and I might beat the chickens. I put in a proposal the first day of the announcement, before Randy had a chance.
The interesting part was when Shelley Talbot came up to me that week in the hallway. I was very curious about this, because up until now, Shelley had looked at me like something to be scraped off the bottom of her shoe. She was one of the popular girls, very pretty, and the rumor mill had it down as gospel that chastity was not one of her cardinal virtues. Supposedly she put out, but I had serious doubts about a fourteen or fifteen year old girl doing that back in the Sixties. Then again, I did have a feeling she was more advanced than her classmates. She was the only girl in the school who I knew for a fact dyed her hair. In the eighth grade she had been a blonde. This year she was a brunette.
She came up to me between classes at my locker. “Carl, can I talk to you for a bit?”
I smiled and said, “What’s up?” For the first time in my life I was actually tall enough to look a girl in the eye!
“Well, you know, we have to do a project for the science fair. What are you doing?”
I gave a brief explanation of my plan. “What were you doing?” I asked. I was curious. Technically the Science Fair was optional, but participation would be good for your grade. In practical terms, it was required for college prep, and Shelley was not college prep.
She groaned, “I can’t think of anything!”
“You need some ideas? I suppose I can help with that.”
“Uh…” She gave me a slightly coquettish look. “Well, I was wondering. You know, we can do this in teams of two, and I was wondering, uh, maybe…”
I stared at her. This was totally out of the blue! This was a girl who wouldn’t give me the time of day before. What was going on?! “You want to team with me? Why?”
“Oh, God, Carl! Like, you’re so smart! Everybody knows you take classes over at Towson and all. You’re straight A, for Christ’s sake! You’re going to blow this away!”
I gave her a thoughtful look. “Yeah? So, what’s in it for me?”
“What do you mean?” The idea that somebody wouldn’t be dying to have her in their team was an alien concept.
“I mean, if this is a team effort, what do you bring to the team?” I replied.
Her face kind of scrunched up at this. An original thought would kill this girl, and right now she was experiencing death-like symptoms. “Uhhhh…”
I let her off the hook. “Listen, let me give it some thought. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Alright?”
“Thanks, Carl, you’re tremendous!” she said, and then she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek! She was off and down the hallway after that, while I stood there in shock, rubbing my cheek until the class bell rang. I was late to English 9.
I was lost in thought the rest of the day. Developing a project outline for a scientific experiment was a piece of cake. I had spent fifty years working with math and the hard sciences before, even at the construction company. I jotted down notes quickly. No, what had me wondering was Shelley. The way she had looked at me, and that kiss… well, that kiss really made me wonder! It had been a long time since that had happened to me, and I liked it. Was she trying to buy my support via some form of sexual gratification. A Buckman can’t be bought — but we can be rented! I looked forward to negotiations.
By the next morning I had developed two plans of attack, one for me doing the project alone and the other for working as a team. We had a week to develop our planned projects, for review by the science teachers, but I wanted to get my project approved before Randy submitted his plan. I saw Shelley in the hallway before class and asked her to meet with me at lunch. Normally she would never have been seen with a geek like me, but she readily agreed. She must be desperate, I thought.
She was. She admitted she needed a good grade on this project in order to pass Science, and everyone knew I was going to win. She was also a lousy negotiator, revealing the weakness of her position like this. I brought out the two person plan and explained it. “Okay, here’s the plan. We’re going to smoke a whole lot of cigarettes and collect all the tar, and then measure it.”
“We’re going to what?! I don’t smoke and I don’t plan to start!” she protested.
I grinned at her. “Good for you. Neither do I. No, we’re going to build a machine and let it do the smoking for us.” I pulled a sketch I had worked on out of my binder and laid it down. “See, here’s how it works. First we get a vacuum pump, and then we simply make a few filters and attach them to the pump. Finally, at the other end, we make a mouthpiece and stick in a cigarette. We turn on the pump and light the cigarette. The pump draws the air in and the smoke goes into the filter. Afterwards we measure what was in the filter.” I traced the parts of the system with my finger, and Shelley followed along.
She slowly nodded, but looked up at me. “We do all that for only one cigarette?”
I shook my head. “No, never work that way. There’s not that much tar in a cigarette. We’ll have to smoke a lot of cigarettes, a whole lot.”
“Like how many? Besides, where do we get the cigarettes? We can’t buy them. We’re not old enough to buy them.”
That was questionable, since I knew several guys who already smoked, however no way was I going to buy them from a vending machine. I had given it some thought though. “I’m not completely sure, but probably several cartons.” She looked at me confused. “Do either of your parents smoke?” I asked.
She nodded. “Both of them do.”
“Okay. There’s twenty cigarettes in a pack, and ten packs in a carton. That makes two hundred cigarettes per carton. Five cartons is a thousand cigarettes.”
“That’s a lot of cigarettes.”
“Yeah, but we need that many. I don’t know how much tar is in a cigarette, but it’s on the order of milligrams. A milligram is a thousandth of a gram,” I explained.
“So a thousand cigarettes is…” She looked stumped.