Thursday, 23 March 2017

The 5-hour Science Experiment

ASid has the awesome tendency to spring last minute requests on us. This time, he needed a kitchen for a science experiment that involved baking.

For reasons that are boring and not necessary for the telling of this tale, ASid and his 2 friends (a boy and a girl) ended up in my mom's kitchen. What is important to divulge here though is that my parents recently moved into their new custom built home; and my mom decided to let 3 teenagers use her brand new oven that she herself hadn't used! It is also quite pertinent to reveal that she thought they were baking for charitable reasons and it turned out they were conducting a scientific experiment! Not just that, they were filming the whole thing as they made 4 batches of muffins with different ratios of ingredients.

Here are some choice remarks by the grandma:

These kids can't crack an egg!

They just dropped the entire contents of a small vanilla extract bottle on my new floor!

… And then they dropped some freshly squeezed lemon juice!

Does 30 seconds twice mean 60 seconds at once?

My mom was perplexed and mystified and annoyed and horrified. She kept cleaning up after every batch trying to save her spanking new kitchen. 5 hours later, she was happy to help the 3 teenagers pack up so they could go home, and she could then wash her whole kitchen and remove all traces of them ever being there!

This is what ASid had to say on the way back:

Wow, grandma pulled out stuff from nowhere. She had everything we needed.

Mom, you are the secret MVP.

At this point in time, I must also reveal one of Craigley's comments:

ASid, your mom would never have let you use her kitchen!

To which, I responded:

I would have...in the name of science and for science!

All comments and remarks aside, it does take a few city folks to raise 3 teenagers.

- three parents went shopping separately and bought the ingredients for the experiment

- one parent picked up the 3 teenagers from school and dropped them off at my parents' home

- my friend Y helped me pick up pizzas for 3 hungry teenagers

- Craigley came by to pick us up and drop off one of the teenagers on our way home

- my mom was brave enough to let us all into her home (although this might be the first and the last time; only time will tell)

The experiment took about 5 hours from start to finish. The teens weren't sure if they proved their hypothesis. Does it matter? I told them that admitting to being wrong about their hypothesis is one possible conclusion as well. In life, not always are we right about everything; sometimes we are wrong!

To be honest, the teens could have told me to buzz off! They probably wanted to, but instead two of them simultaneously quoted Edison and had this to say:

I have not failed. I just found 10, 000 ways that won't work.

Nothing more to say or write after that!

 
Note: All the above happened yesterday. It was also the day I shared this blog with my dad. I had to let my parents know I am doing something somewhat useful in my life…on top of raising a teenager who drops everything and can’t crack an egg!
 

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