Science (not) Fair

My backpack is covered in dinosaurs. Different dinosaurs in different colors. A blue stegosaurus. A red triceratops. A green flying one that always confuses me because I'm never sure if it's a pterodactyl or pteranodon. What's the difference? Also, why do they both have a silent 'p' in their names? It's not 'ptyrannosaurus' or 'ptriceratops.' Come on, paleontologists. Get your shit ptogether.

I had a dinosaur backpack in elementary school too. It was even cooler. The backpack was jet black with a red zipper. It had a T-rex fossil outline on the back. The fossil popped up from the backpack so you could feel the grooves and contours of the bones. Whenever I would get nervous, I would trace the outline with my fingers as if I were reading braille.

Back then, I wasn't just into dinosaurs. I was into science as a whole. Bill Nye the Science Guy and Beakman's World were my favorite shows. I liked learning how the world worked. Knowledge is power and whatnot.

In the fourth grade, Mrs. Decker announced to the class that we would be participating in a science fair.

This was the first step on the road to becoming a bonafide scientist. I was going to win the science fair and then go to Science University and get a bachelor's in science and do science-y things. Like cure cancer. And solve global warming. And invent a liquid that made everything taste like chocolate. I spent a lot of time thinking about that last one. I was a fat kid.

The day the fair was announced, I went home and scribbled down all of the experiments I could think of. Most of them were too ambitious or too complicated or just plain weird. As much as I wanted to crossbreed a frog and a bird to create a flying amphibian hybrid, I didn't know how to go about it. Also, I didn't know about sex.

The experiment I settled on was still dope. It involved testing different liquids on plants to see which one grew the most.

I bought eight plants and settled on six liquids. Two of the plants were control subjects which would only receive water. The other plants would be fed orange juice, milk, Coke, Capri Sun, vinegar or Clorox. I briefly considered using chocolate milk for one of the subjects, but I ended up drinking it all. I was a fat kid.

I was meticulous throughout the process and spent well over two hours everyday for three weeks checking up on the plants. They all received the same amount of liquid at the same time of day. I would then assess their progress with a tape measure and record the data in a Mead composition notebook.

I also spent a lot of time in the library reading up on plants. I don't remember much about it now, but back in the fourth grade, I could bore the shit out of you with everything I knew about photosynthesis and chloroplasts and cell walls and cytoplasm.

My hypothesis was that the milk plant would surpass all the others. The reason being that milk does a body good. Why wouldn't it do the same for a plant?

Turns out, the OJ plant was the real winner. It grew twice as large as the control subjects. Unsurprisingly, the Clorox plant lost. Because it died. Clorox killed the plant, you guys.

I wrote up my findings and organized them onto a tri-fold poster board. I added my hypothesis with the research I had done, then wrote up an analysis and conclusion with data to back it up. To make the presentation less boring, I drew penguins in lab coats to illustrate the experiment. I was in a penguin phase at the time.

The day of the fair, all of the fourth graders lined up in front of their experiments in the school library. Most of them put in just enough effort to look like they cared. "Will an egg float in fresh water or salt water?" was a popular experiment, but there were also a couple of volcanoes and potato batteries.

Mrs. Decker was the judge. She walked around the room, eyeing each experiment carefully and asking pointed questions. When she reached me, I stood tall and made sure the plants were organized properly in front of the tri-fold.

Mrs. Decker read through my hypothesis and research, then examined each of the plants. She asked no questions.

"Very thorough, Alfonso." she said. "Nice. Very nice."

Then she walked off and we broke for lunch.

I spent the entire lunch period thinking about how awesome that first-place blue ribbon was going to look in my room and how my life was going to be devoted to science. In between bites of Mexican Pizza, I would tell everyone how much I loved science. They just ignored me, but I didn't care. I was ecstatic. I had found my calling. Also, I had three slices of Mexican Pizza. Again, I was a fat kid, remember?

When we came back, I rushed over to my plants and looked around for the blue ribbon. Instead, I found a red ribbon with a big fat "2" in the center. Second-place. First loser.

I heard shouts of joy from the corner of the library and looked over to see David Decker pumping his fists into the air. David was Mrs. Decker's son.

I walked over to his tri-fold. It was a recounting of Newton's apple story complete with typed-up explanations and photographs of apples falling from trees. It wasn't even an experiment. It was a history lesson.

But smack dab in the middle of his tri-fold was a blue ribbon.

No matter how much effort you put in, it doesn't really matter. It's all politics and nepotism. The moral of the story?

Don't even bother. The rat race is rigged. Never try, guys. Or ptry, I guess. Never ptry.