Science!
The very word is incisive. Clean. Cold to the touch, like a chrome-plated speculum. Hushed, like crepe-soled shoes squeaking gently across antiseptic linoleum. Science is the place where numbers are a language and everything has an objective reality that can be discovered and shared. Science is the realm of the unimaginably vast and the unimaginably small, and technology gives us superpowers to explore it.My parents were medical people, and proto-geeks. I grew up in a world of scopes and books and samples and radio gear and recording equipment. I was encouraged to take things apart, even if I seldom got them back together again. I got to play at science.
As I grew older, I learned that real science means learning reams of information by heart, so that when the need arises, the data is there. It's approaching the world in a way that is disciplined, methodical and precise. It's years of careful repetition and disappointment leading to bright moments of discovery.
So when the time came to choose a career, did I opt for the sciences? No! No-no-no! Oh, hell no! It all sounds so boring and grown-up...and hard.
I just want to peer down microscopes and exclaim, "that blobby thing just ate the thing with the little hairs all around it!" I want to float around in a rubber raft on the lake near my house like Weasel of the Amazon and say, "coo, look at that bird over there! No, the brown one with the wiggly stuff on its head!" I want to solder things together from kits. With clear instructions. I want to wear a white labcoat buttoned down the left shoulder and swagger around with a stethoscope and an oscilloscope. I want to be referred to as "Dr. Weasel" in tones of hushed respect, and say things to my colleagues like, "have we trespassed where no man was meant to tread?" and "you must be mad, Doctor!" In short, I want to be a make-believe scientist.
And so, of course, I am one.