The Ylide Odyssey
It was an organic chemistry lab day like any other. Almost unlike any other, this time our laboratory partnership's third wheel, a theatrical enthusiast biochemistry major who showed up all of three times all year, was actually present. Mike the lab director was shouting out amendments to the instructions the teachng assistants had given to us minutes earlier. Small-scale territorial disputes broke out between groups fighting for fume hood placement. I began singing the name of the day's incredibly toxic chemical to the tune of Mele Kalikimaka.
Moose: Chlorosulfonic acid is the thing today, that will burn your fingertips away…
Greg: There's a concept. How much better do you suppose we would remember things if all our subjects were taught in song?
Moose: Greg! You showed up today. What's going on?
Greg: You know the game Jenga?
Moose: Ah, it was one of those cases where one wrong block is pulled, one thing in your life goes wrong and it all falls over?
Greg: No, I've been in a two-month long Jenga tournament.
I stood in line to have my identity taken away from me in exchange for a plastic briefcase of glassware. A sea of white labcoats developed a powerful undercurrent between the bottles of chemicals that everyone needed which were only available in two places in the entire room housing hundreds.
Megan: So Craig actually showed up today, eh?
Moose: It's Greg, and yes, this is the third time all year?
Megan: Something like that. I wonder what he's doing here.
I stood in a line of gloved lab participants bare-handed, awaiting the deadly acid. What does not kill me makes me stronger. Or permanently disfigures my hands, something like that.
Jane: Don't you care if you spill something on your hands?
Moose: Who's to say that I haven't already?
The red spot on my hand produced by the sulphuric acid I dropped on it has nearly disappeared at this point. It's about time, that was over a month ago.
Megan: Well, he's a bit underdressed for the weather.
Moose: Who is?
Megan: Him over there, in the shorts.
Moose: Oh, I see. How peculiar.
The line was stalled. Some fellow at the front didn't know how to properly use a pipet bulb, which didn't keep him from attempting twenty times. I realized, as our group had diasporaed over to right next to where the chemicals were being dispensed, it would make a great deal more sense to simply pretend to work at our fume hood space and steal the chemicals when no one was looking.
Moose: Well, I have a friend who never wears pants simply because he doesn't own any. That could be the case for him over there.
Amanda: Have you asked him?
Moose: No.
Amanda: Ask him. There's an interesting explanation.
I wondered how to approach the fellow about his choice of legwear. I couldn't find a way that didn't sound insulting. It didn't help that I could easily picture him saying, 'One cannot hunt tigers while wearing pants.' Anyone involved in the business of hunting tigers is someone you ought to approach with the utmost carefulness of syntax.
Moose: Excuse me sir, I've noticed you never wear pants, and I heard there is an explanation for this.
I didn't like how it sounded in my head. Like I was asking him to explain himself for something that wasn't necessarily his fault. Like perhaps the stranger who clued me in to the possibility of there being an interesting explanation was bluffing in order to see me beaten to the ground while he growled, 'I can't afford pants, you have a problem with that?' I also didn't like the way he looked back at me while I walked up to him, then balked, almost as though he knew what I was there for. It was the pants, wasn't it? That's all people notice about him. That and the corn rows. And the tiger fight scars.
Brent: Well, here's our product.
Moose: Is there anything there?
Brent: Difficult to tell. I'll ask Peggy.
Peggy: That is not the product you are supposed to have. Just weigh it and write down 160 for your melting point.
Peggy the teaching assistant was a major improvement over Xiaojun from the first semester. To say nothing of her amazingly lustrous hair, she has proved quite knowledgeable and approachable, whereas Xiao actively avoided his students. Interestingly enough, I saw them standing together and talking in a most friendly manner. I thought how ironic it would be if they were an item, especially after the instructions for evaluating our teaching assistants we were given.
Mike: Now, when you go upstairs, you find TA evaluation forms. If you feel as though your TA gave you the best, most life-changing experience of your life, say so. We give an award for the best TA each semester, and it's largely based on your evaluations. On the other hand, if you feel the last thing your TA should be doing is teaching… well, let me know that, too, so that next semester when they send in their applications, I can have them redirected to the first-year lab.
Would Xiaojun be reassigned? Not if the sarcastic 'Go Xiao go!' evaluation our group submitted the first semester was taken at face value. If he were reassigned, though, would that break his theoretical relationship with Peggy? Was their social chemistry based on organic chemistry? And how far of a stretch would them dating be? They are of the same ethnicity, which seems to hold a great deal more influence over our choices of significant others than we like to admit. Which I believe will forestall any merging of the world into one ethnicity until considerably longer than predicted.
I never mustered the courage to ask my pantsless labmate the question, and I fear at this point I may never find the opportunity. Our final lab session was an isolation of a chemical from an orange which took all of one hour, as opposed to the typical three hours, and which I probably could have performed in my room with a bit of dry ice. What bothers me is that at this point, if I never see him again, what was the worst that could have happened by asking him, why don't you have pants?
So let's transform this from a disappointing anticlimax into a contest: the mystery of No-Pants Ned. If you never wore pants, why would this be? What is the most interesting reason you could come up with for not ever wearing pants? Keep this PG-13, thanks. Most interesting answer wins something, maybe.
Megan: So that was our last organic chemistry lab.
Moose: I suppose so.
Megan: Kind of a sad moment.
Moose: It was good while it happened.
I paused a moment to look back inside the room. My first experiences with a university-level laboratory course. Dreams were born in this room. Or at least hallucinations, for there are plenty of things to inhale. I have many more hallucinations to live out in my time.