The Absent-Minded Professor's-Helper

The Pony has been in talks with one of the professors about becoming a lab assistant. He helped clean out the lab that is being remodeled, and has been looking into some research topics. It's chemical stuff with nano particles that I don't know much about. The Pony seems to have a better handle on that information than on the tasks of daily living. Surprise.

"I made ramen earlier and had a bottle of glass root beer blow up because I thought it was fine to have them in the freezer, since Grandma D always did it."

"How long did you leave it in there? Are you okay? Wear goggles next time you drink a root beer!"

"I'm fine. I heard a bang in the fridge, thought it was biscuits since that happens, turned out it was root beer. I thought she just kept them in there! I had mine in for about an hour."

"No way can you keep glass bottles of soda in a freezer! You must have had an incompetent physics teacher..."

"I thought glass could handle it. I knew plastic couldn't! I didn't think Grandma D only put them in there when we came over!"

"I'm pretty sure they were in a fridge, not a freezer. Or else she DID put them in when you came over."

"They were in a freezer because it had that ice bulge on the sides! (The freezer, I mean) But they were usually deep in it, and cold enough to hurt your hands. So I thought they were always in there."

"Well, then, she did it just for you. Good thing she didn't have swampland to sell you. Or the London Bridge."

"Hmpf."

"Genius learned that an oven's heating element is hot..." [He sizzled a brand on his forearm while getting a tray of potato skins out of the oven.]


"Yes, yes, laugh it up."

"Like the great joy both of you took in my dead-bird-stepping-on faux pas?" [It was under the fallen leaves on the teacher parking lot. I don't have x-ray vision. Or a steel-trap memory for buried carcass location.]


"Hmmph"

"Is there something in your throat? Do the Heimlich over the back of a kitchen chair! Oh, wait. You don't have a kitchen chair. But at least you have dishes and silverware since January! Better late than never."

Here's the thing. You would expect a kid who got a perfect score on his ACT, and is majoring in chemical engineering at a major university on a National Merit scholarship, would know that you can't put glass bottles of liquid in a freezer and expect the liquid not to freeze and expand.

We used to visit my grandma every Sunday evening. She would tell the boys to go get a root beer out of the fridge on her back porch. I suppose The Pony is confused, because it was an old refrigerator, with the freezer compartment up top. Grandma didn't use that freezer. Only the fridge part, for sodas. So the freezer was frozen full of ice. I suppose The Pony imagined that the whole contraption was a freezer. Still, it's disturbing that he felt the PLASTIC bottles of soda would not survive, but a glass bottle of soda would.

I guess something stored in his brain had to go, to make room for that nano particle stuff.