Bleached Business

Every time I spot a printed copy of the Business Daily on newspaper stands, I remember high school. I remember a tattered chemistry book. You wonder what Business Daily got to do with chemistry? Hold that thought. Take a reminiscence journey with me.

Do you remember your ex’s phone number by heart no matter how hard you wish you couldn’t? Bad things stick around like super glue. When computer scientists and neurosurgeons marry, they will discover a special part of the brain, about 10GB of non-volatile memory that stores useless stuff.

I remember cold metallic stools that sucked the warmth out of us in chemistry labs. Those cold stools used to have sharp right angles at all four corners. You know how that hurts your behind? If you sat carelessly the edges would rip off your shorts. Yes, we used to wear shorts. In moody July weather, we suffered. I’m at a loss to explain how girls who wear short dresses manage to sit on cold metallic chairs unperturbed.  Now if you wore a short short (notice what I’ve done there?) your thigh would be rudely massaged by 10 degrees of cold metal. Tingly sensation.  The one good thing you got out of that stool is alertness. When the teacher taught polymers, you understood polymers. You never dozed off.

I’m not done with the stools. Most of them had stands that were unequal. Never balanced when you sat.  You seesawed throughout double lessons. Occasionally adjusting to make sure the aorta pumps to the feet. If it ever does that. That is if you were unlucky to grab a proper wooden stool.

Anyway, the Business Daily. Why is it printed on some sort of brown paper? Contrast with the Daily Nation. Those are the questions I ask my chemistry.

Then I remember sexy words like ‘bleaching agent’, ‘oxidation’, ‘chlorine and its compounds’ , ‘soap less detergents’, ’gas laws’, ‘alkenes’, ‘electrolysis of brine’, ‘Avogadro’ and ‘moles’. Not all words were sexy though. The mole concept was such a turn off! Especially the molar gas volumes. It marked the beginning of flunking miserably. Forty percent became the new eighty percent.

If you hit a 41% you were badass. A Saudi prince of sorts. The emperor of Ethiopia. Haile Selassie himself.  The Mexican drug lord. Guzman.  You were Walter White (from Breaking Bad) and Jesse Pinkman combined. When you talked we listened. The earth rotated around your desk. You and your moles. You were the shit.

I suppose the only group that fell in love with chem and carried the relationship past the school gate were the shisha lovers. I imagine they used to look at the volumetric flask (or is it the round-bottomed flask) with such lustful eyes. There is something peculiar about love and how people manage to hide it or rather deny it a chance. Those chaps were not necessarily excited by the idea of a chemistry practical. What with wafting poisonous gases. They secretly admired the burette. From a distance. Titration experts those ones! They calculated molar gas volumes with their eyes. By just staring at the pot. Then there was the fume chamber. Call it shisha lounge.

Chemistry and I had an on-off kind of relationship. I never got madly in love. I wonder what I’m missing from not inhaling perfumed shisha smoke.