He kept coming in with these ridiculously-cool projects that had everyone--even the teacher--in awe. I call them electronic projects, but that's not accurate. More like electrical projects. Electronic things like transistors and things like that were not something the common man had his hands on yet in those days. In his experiments and projects he used coils, dry-cell batteries, switches, lights, and all sorts of things to demonstrate electricity to us. It wasn't like he had his father or someone building his projects either. He knew everything about them inside-out. I do remember one thing he had that was built using a small cardboard box. He had a round switch on top with a black knob on it. On the top of the box were some wires and a small pattern of 3 thumbtacks. When he would click the switch back and forth a bright, blue spark would jump across the thumbtacks. He had the battery and coil that generated it all inside. It was cool.
One time in an apparent fit of jealousy I opened the cupboard where he kept his stuff and I placed a pair of scissors across the two terminals of one of his dry-cell batteries. I did it to short it out and drain it of voltage. I must have thought that if he didn't have a battery to power his inventions he wouldn't be able to impress his classmates with his genius. Anyway, nobody told me to do it, nor did I ever tell anyone that I did it.
You know what? It's one of a small number of things that I have done that have never left me alone. My conscience has never let me forget that act of wrongdoing for my own pathetic gain. It will haunt me the rest of my life because I can't fix it. I can't apologize to him. I doubt those tall dry-cell batteries he used were cheap.
No comments:
Post a Comment