TheMommyBlog

Friday, March 27, 2009 Other people who write, Family

The school science fair was the other night, and boy are my arms tired.

For starters, there was no rhyme or reason to the displays. There were approximately 467964368763 science experiments, all displayed on the same three-foot tall, tri-fold presentation boards. All using the same Word Art for titles and text. It was like looking through a room full of travel brochures and trying to figure out which one your own kid wrote. It was not for the faint of heart, and temperatures approached Irritable with all the bodies in the cafeteria.

My best friend’s son (who will marry Daphne one day, God willing) did an experiment based on something he saw Les Stroud do on Survivorman.

The title refers to the host of the show, Canadian filmmaker and survival expert Les Stroud, who must use his skills to survive for seven days alone in remote locales with little or no food, water, and equipment.

During the filming of each episode, Stroud is alone and operates all the cameras himself. He is equipped with only his clothes, camera equipment (which he does not use for survival except in an emergency), his harmonica, a Leatherman multi-tool, and often “everyday items” relevant to the episode’s particular survival scenario.

In one episode, he ran out of water and was forced to build a solar still to recycle his own urine. Understandably, this seven year old boy was FASCINATED with the idea. He wanted to do it for the science fair.

His mother, being ever sane and sanitary, encouraged him to use water with food coloring in it instead of his own urine. He built the still, waited and observed, and it worked! So, of course I had to see the presentation board.

When I found it, another parent was hunched over, reading all the little notes and peering at the pictures. While waiting my turn to check it out, I said, “I can’t believe they wimped out and didn’t use urine.”

The man looked at me as if I were crazy. I glanced at the board. No mention was made of the inspiration behind the project. Great. I just walked up to a stranger and talked about drinking urine without a shred of context.

In other news, I plan to finally get around to listing and even reviewing some of the eleventy books y’all have so generously sent to me. I’m actually reading some or all of these at once, and finished the others some time ago. It’s long overdue, either way. So stay tuned for comments on all of these books.