“I apologize, Professor, it won’t happen again,” I assured him.
“I know it won’t,” he said with a smile. To my mother, he said, “Talk to your son. He would have a future in chemistry.”
From there we went into the lab. Today’s work was simple. We weighed the filter without the cotton, then Shelley and I fluffed up some cotton and put that in place, and then reweighed the loaded filter. After we had smoked a bunch of cigarettes through it, in a couple of week’s time we would reweigh things. The filter system should be demonstrably heavier. Afterwards we would isolate the tar and measure that. Throughout the experiment, we could calculate the amounts of tar we could obtain and the overall efficiency of our system.
Shelley followed along well enough, once it was explained. Mom was totally lost, but ridiculously proud. Mom drove us back over to Shelley’s house, and Shelley took the filter inside. Mom also noticed that on the ride over to Towson State, and the ride back, I rode in the back with Shelley, and that when I walked Shelley to her door, Shelley gave me a very enjoyable kiss before going inside.
I got back into the car, although in the front seat this time. Mom immediately asked, “So is Shelley your girlfriend, too?”
“Yes, I think we could say that,” I admitted.
“Why haven’t you told us anything about her?”
I just stared at her briefly and started laughing. Mom wasn’t amused but she bit her tongue. “Carl, I’m serious.”
“Okay, Mom, I’ll tell you about all my current girlfriends the same day you tell me about all your current boyfriends.” I started laughing some more.
“Carl! How dare you?! I don’t have any boyfriends!”
“Well, I’m sure Dad will be relieved!” I continued laughing until we got home and managed to avoid answering any questions.
To be fair about it, once I started dating, my mother never gave me any real grief, back in the first time around. I was a fairly good kid and not one that fathers would start chasing around with a shotgun. The only time she ever stuck her nose in was a brief period between girls when she suggested I ask Denise Maitland out. ‘She’s such a nice girl.’ I almost rolled on the floor laughing, telling her that Denise Maitland was the Queen Bitch of the entire high school, and if she ever held my hand, I’d cut it off at the wrist. She never bothered with me again on the subject of girls.
Mom got very upset with me that night. First she told everyone at the table that I had a girlfriend, which was amusing, not upsetting. That came later. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Ham started in on me. “Carling’s got a girlfriend! Carling’s got a girlfriend!” started spewing out in an annoying sing-song rendition.
I looked over at my father, rolling my eyes and pointing with my head at my brother. “Dad? Really?”
He gave my brother a disgusted look and yelled, “Hamilton, knock it off!”
Hamilton started sulking. “What did I do?”
“Just shut up and eat your dinner.”
Mom then said, “But Carling won’t tell me anything about her.”
“Mom, it’s like I told you. I’ll tell you all about my girlfriends as soon as you tell me about all your boyfriends.”
Suzie and Hamilton giggled at that, Nana snorted, and my father just eyed Mom curiously. Mom protested, “Carling!” and then looked over at Dad. “Don’t you start, mister.”
“I don’t know, Shirley. Sounds reasonable to me.”
“Yeah, Dad, you can tell us about your girlfriends, too,” I remarked.
“Old girlfriends or new girlfriends?” he asked, causing even more giggling.
“You two think you’re just so smart!”
I looked over at my father and we shrugged our shoulders. I turned back to Mom and said, “Well, we are smart. You want us to be dumb?”
Mom started wagging a finger at both of us, which only got her other children and her mother laughing, before she stopped and primly announced she wasn’t going to go any further. Then she caused real problems, when she announced at the dinner table how she had taken Shelley and me over to Towson State and how I was going to become a chemist.
Dad looked at me curiously, since he knew I was interested in math. I just stared at Mom in disbelief. “No, Mom, I never said any such thing. I have no interest in becoming a chemist.” Again.
“Well, that’s just silly. That professor said you would be a brilliant chemist. You like chemistry. He said that this Science Fair project was good enough for college.” Mom heard what she wanted to hear. She had selective hearing disorder as bad as any four-year-old.
“Uh, huh. You told me I did a nice job scrubbing the floor last Saturday, but that doesn’t mean I want to become a janitor,” I answered.
“Don’t give me any lip. You do very well at this sort of thing. You’ll be an excellent engineer some day, maybe a chemical engineer.”
I just stared in disbelief. There it was, her master plan for my life. I was to be Mini-Me for Dad. “No, Mom, I will not.”
“Carling, stop it. I have to say, your behavior now is very disappointing!”
I glanced over at Dad, who was silently watching us. I suspected she had been planning this since I was born, and had suitably informed him at many steps along the way. I could also tell by the look on his face he was not at all convinced this was such a good idea. Despite the ease with which he punished my brother and me for the most trivial of offenses, he actually had a pretty tight grip on reality.
I took a deep breath and looked back at Mom. “You should get used to that feeling, Mom. It’s going to be a lot more frequent than you can imagine.”
“Watch your mouth, Carl,” my father told me.
“Sorry, Dad.”
“How dare you! Charles, are you going to allow this insubordination?”
“Let him talk, Shirley.”
She looked over at me as if about to launch into a tirade and I just held up a hand to stop her. “Mother, I love you, but you seem to have my life planned out in advance. Well, it’s my life, not yours. Let’s be very clear on this. I would happily die for you, but I will never live for you. I will go to the colleges I want to go to, choose the professions I want to choose, and take the jobs I want to take. Along the way, I will date the girls I want to date and marry whoever I want to marry. We will live where we want to live, in the house we want to live in. I have a terrible feeling that very little of what I do will match up with your plans for me.”
She stared at me. “Charlie, are you going to sit there and allow your son to talk to me that way?!”
“Shirley, let him be. If he doesn’t want to be a chemist or an engineer, fine. That’s his business, not ours.” Mom started crying, and then got up and ran from the room. I looked over at Dad, who simply heaved a great sigh and said, “Just shut up, Carling. You’ve had your say, but don’t push it.” I just nodded.
Later, Hamilton started in on me about making Mom cry and how I was in big trouble. I throttled my desire to beat him to a bloody but silent pulp, and took the book I was reading up to the living room. He didn’t dare follow me somewhere our parents might hear him.
Friday I gave Shelley a typed schedule for the experimentation. I had budgeted two weeks to smoke the first five cartons of smokes for Professor Milhaus, and then a third week to isolate the tar for him. We would then repeat this three week exercise to generate a sample to be shown during the Science Fair. Finally, we would use another couple of weeks to generate a filter sample without the chemical isolation, also for the Science Fair. At that point we would have a couple of weeks left to prepare our exhibit and type up a report.