The Science Fair at Hampton Elementary was a big deal, a chance to wow and amaze others with one’s industry and imagination. I am in the 7th grade and a new kid in town that year, although I’ve managed to settle into the comfortable rhythm of life in Hampton by the time this annual event comes around on the Spring calendar. I don’t remember any adults erupting into overt laughter but there were many not-quite-contained bemused looks at the original idea for my science fair submission.
My project idea? I was going to put one of my father’s lab rats into suspended animation and then bring it back to life. It was a humble enough ambition, I thought, despite the reality that none of the world’s greatest scientists up to then – or even in the decades since – had come even close to achieving such a lofty outcome. To my way of thinking, though, I had the essential ingredient – a ready supply of hooded rats that my father used in his basic brain research at UConn – and, heck, the rest of it should be easy enough. “Does anyone have a spare cylinder of liquid nitrogen,” I can hear myself thinking, “and maybe one of those thingys you need to bring a rat back to life after being frozen?”
Fortunately for the rats, my project idea was rejected. Instead, I partnered with Bob Neborsky on a demonstration of how solar cells work and we won some sort of recognition for that. I can’t remember whether Bob and I won 1st prize – that probably went to the kid who attached himself to a large round board and drank a glass of milk while inverted to demonstrate how astronauts could feed themselves in space (I know I was pretty amazed). But our project was exciting enough that Bob and I were chosen to be on some TV show from Providence, along with other kids who had winning Science Fair entries. I can’t quite fetch much about the event from my greying memory banks other than our return trip to Hampton in the Neborsky’s station wagon when some kid threw up (I swear it wasn’t me!) and we all suffered the long journey home immersed in that horror.
These days, my ambitions are a little less lofty. Honestly, I’m pretty certain that I wouldn’t want to wake up in some future world after being in suspended animation. It’s difficult enough to adapt to the ever-evolving technologies that assault us with every new iteration of a cell phone or a TV or the newest car features. I definitely don’t want to learn how to live on the latest Mars colony – my earthbound 21st century existence is complicated enough, thank you very much. Take me back to Hampton in 1966, please – simpler times when people, not gadgets, captured our imaginations, reanimated rats notwithstanding.
Kit Crowne