Science I Forgot

By Sally Franz

I think knowledge is like riding a bicycle, if you aren’t using it regularly you fall off and forget how to ride.

This came up the other day when my husband and I, avid science and astronomer buffs (okay if not buffs, fans anyway) realized we had no idea how the moon risings and sun settings related. Further we were aware that when we gazed at the moon craters we always saw the same side of the moon. We are fortunate to live in a place free of pollution, so when we gaze upward we can see several planets and the Milky Way.

We had to humble ourselves and ask our phone how the entire solar system worked again and especially our own orbit and moon. The voice inside my phone gently soothed that it was not an easy concept to grasp. I do not know if that is true or condescending sing-songy lilting verbiage used to prevent a senior citizen from ejecting their phone from a moving car. Maybe it is meant as high tech sarcasm. “Okay class, let’s rehearse the planet and moon skit. Shon you’re the sun, Shawn you’re the earth, Sean you’re the moon. See class? And all the smart kids roll their eyes because this is the third time they have had to demonstrate this and they want to move on to string theory, the middle thinkers are saying “aha!” and the right brain thinkers (um that would be me) who would rather just paint pictures of planets because we still don’t get it and don’t care. The YouTube animation helped a little, but just reminded me of all the things I can’t recall.

For instance except for asking for a glass of “H2O” I have never used the Periodic Table since 9^th grade. I have never used Algebra until this week when I had to order gravel for a spot in the driveway that was an elongated tri-angle area. All I could do is mumble something about the square of the hypotenuse and an Isosceles triangle and then I ordered 2 cubic yards of crushed clean basalt more from intuition than any recall of how that math stuff actually worked.

I have forgotten most dates in history except “in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. I do not know any of the major dates of wars through history, but I do recall why there were wars, that women and children always perish in large amounts as do the frail and elderly. I recall that someone always gets very rich when there is a war. Also if a country has too many wars right in a row it eventually bankrupts them and they fall. Or if they have wars on too many fronts at a time they are doomed. And who can forget the rule: never have a war in the mountains, especially if you are the one in the plains. You learn that one from playing “King of the Hill” with bigger kids.

All in all I am delighted to say that I never forgot how to play jacks, fly kites or throw water balloons and snowballs. I have never forgotten to sit on the floor when you play with kids and I have never lost the fine art of spitting watermelon seeds. I can whistle with my fingers in my mouth, yodel and swim. I paint, garden and sing out loud in the car to the radio.

These meager skills may not add up to a lucrative career in high tech, but that is the joy of being retired, I am not building a resume, I am building memories.

Sally Franz and her third husband live on the Olympic Peninsula. She has two daughters, a stepson, and three grandchildren. Sally is the author of several humor books including Scrambled Leggs: A Snarky Tale of Hospital Hooey and The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Menopause. She hosts a local radio humor segment, “Baby Boomer Humor with Sassy Sally”.