Into the Valley of Science Rode the 600

Into the valley of science rode the 600 and in the morning they departed tired and more than a little sore from sleeping on the floor.

Saturday night my son and I did a Boy Scouts sleepover at the Boston Museum of Science with 598 other scouts, parents and more than a few siblings. It was both a fun experience and a little lesson in perspective.

We arrived just at 5:00 (the earliest we were allowed to report since my son wanted to get there early to meet up with his friends). The event was supposed to end 11:00 am the next day. That meant that from when I arrived I was about to spend the next 18 hours at the Boston Museum of Science. I know it may sound awfully cynical but almost as soon as I got there – I began a countdown till the time to go home. You parents in the crowd – get my back on that.

The Boston Museum of Science is a very cool place – full of very interesting exhibits – but it never ceases to amaze me that what catches kids’ imagination is usually something very mundane. In this case what caught the boys’ fancy was the museum’s hands-free bubblers. They thought they were wicked cool. [For those readers outside of New England – a bubbler is what you might call a water fountain or a drinking fountain. Bubbler is a much cooler name for the water dispensing machine if you ask me.]

Maybe my highlight of the night was getting a call from my friend Tim who gave me my Red Sox update. Tim was nice enough to let me know that David Ortiz had just hit a home run in the Red Sox 8-0 route over the Angels. I say it was nice of Tim because that home run cost Tim $20.

I’ve mentioned this before but Tim and I have a home run pool. Prior to each Red Sox series – we take turns picking three players each. The first guy to pick (almost) always takes David Ortiz. If any one of your three players hits a home run – you win $20. If it happens to be a grand slam or a walk-off home run – you win $40. By the end of the season – we finish about equal but it makes for a little extra fun along the way (like having action on every single game).

Speaking of David Ortiz – he was supposed to wear the number 42 in Sunday’s game in honor of Jackie Robinson but the game got cancelled due to a monsoon. A couple of thoughts on this:

1. The last player to wear #42 for the Red Sox was Mo Vaughn. I would have loved for Big Papi to wear #42 just to do a “Separated at Birth” deal between him and Mo “Foxy Lady Season Ticket Holder” Vaughn. I have a friend who knows his baseball but still calls Ortiz “Mo” very once and a while.
2. Originally it was supposed to be Coco Crisp and third base coach Demarco Hale who were going to wear #42 on Sunday but Ortiz was a late addition to the mix. I have to wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that Terry Francona decided to sit Coco in favor of Willy Mo Pena – supposedly to give Wily Mo some at bats since the team was about to face a few lefties in a row.
3. Knowing that Coco was supposed to wear #42 and that was a big deal on Sunday and also knowing (being the statmeister that he is) that Coco was a career 4 for 4 with 2 walks against Angels starter Ervin Santana - you have to wonder if Terry Francona was sending some sort of message of independence in benching Coco crisp for the game. Francona may have been sending a message that he only cares what’s best for his team to win that day and not some league-wide promotion or he won’t be beholding to starting who has the bigger contracts on the team. Just remember that I was saying there was a story in the Willy Mo vs Coco long before Boston sport talk radio would admit an issue existed.

Back to the museum of science – it was good to go to sleep (finally) but even with two cushioned camping mats – it was like sleeping on hard concrete. The museum probably planned it this way but two of the more interesting activities happened in the morning.

On Sunday morning both a planetarium show and an Omni (Imax in a dome) show were on the schedule.

South Park has made me leery of Planetariums (just joking) but sleeping on concrete made me too sleepy to really appreciate the show (but it would have made me very susceptible to being hypnotized to pick up the South park theme). On the plus side – I think I’ll be able to identify Ursa Major for the next six months (and then I’ll forget it again).

The Omni (Imax) show was about Dr. Jane Goodall and her work in Africa with chimpanzees. What I found most interesting is that Dr. Jane (as she is referred to) took the job in the first place out of a sort of romanticization of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan. Dr. Goodall was not a fan of Tarzan’s Jane (in her heart – she wanted to be that Jane and in my opinion there is no doubt that Dr. Jane would have treated Tarzan much better – sort of the reverse of Michael Corleone and his first wife Appolonia and his second wife Kaye).

What peaked my interest in the reference to Tarzan was the fact that I had just got finished re-reading the original Edgar Rice Burroughs masterpiece for the umpteenth time. As I kid I love the series and read every book in the series that I could get my hands on. I had just re-read the original on a whim and I had been tempted to interest my son in the book. What had held me back was Edgar Rice Burroughs treatment of blacks. The natives were cannibals, the servants were like children – helpless and ignorant without their white “betters’ and the other blacks Tarzan encounters are borderline criminally psychopathic.

That was the issue that I contemplated on the way home from the museum of science on Sunday. In the end – I trusted my son to figure things out for himself and to judge his friends by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin without having to puzzle out the historical ramifications from earlier days. When he’s older maybe he can enjoy Tarzan as just an adventure story (and let me stress that the racial issues are completely an undertone and not a major plot issue). Let’s face it – if people like Don Imus can’t handle the racial issues of today – why should I subject my son to the racial issues of the early 1900’s?