“Bri-ANNE!!!”
It should be known that the way my mother says my name sounds like she’s calling me a girl. And she starts out every phone call like this.
“Bri-Anne!!! Are you coming over Sunday with Amelie to see the rocket launch? Your brother and Striker are coming over.”
“Who is this?” I like to ask into the phone, just to rile her up.
“Bri-ANNNNNE!!! Sheesh. Are you coming or not?”
To the meat of it: My brother’s son just turned 5. His name is Striker. For his birthday, my mom got him a rocket. It was from the Smithsonian. It had to be a good one – and educational – because, well, “… it was from the Smithsonian!” My mother emphasized this about 95 times at his party. As if there is some genius museum developer actually IN the Smithsonian building all of these toy rockets that they sell to people like my mother.
“It goes up 50 feet,” my mother said. “It’s powered by baking soda and vinegar. We’re going to the Special Events Field to launch it because I don’t want to hit any dogs. Do you think it would hurt a dog?!?”
“UP TO 50 feet!” my brother corrected her. “It says right here on the box, ‘up to 50 feet.’ It probably only goes up like 6.”
“NOOOO!!!!” my mother scolded him, as if blasphemy had just been uttered. “It’s made by the Smithsonian. They wouldn’t claim something like that if it wasn’t scientifically accurate. I should know … I read their magazine!”
In her mind, this was the same kind of rocket SpaceX was using to launch military payloads into orbit, all powered by baking soda and vinegar. This one had fabric wings, and a plastic fin that kept falling off.
“Oh, we have got to see this,” my daughter told me at the party. She has an eye for spotting spectacles worth seeing.
Sunday came and three generations gathered at my mother’s house to march over to the field. We had a Smithsonian-issued rocket, a bottle of grocery store-grade vinegar and a half-used box of baking soda, which has likely spent the last 17 years in the back of my mother’s fridge. We found a nice flat spot, chipped off a few chunks of petrified baking soda and readied the contraption. My mother scanned the field for dogs, not wanting to impale one with the rocket’s supersonic speed.
My brother poured in the vinegar, quickly jammed it onto the soda-filled launcher and dove for cover. But he wasn’t quick enough. The sheer force and velocity was too much for him. He was sprayed head to toe in vinegar and baking soda, and smelled like a bad order of fish and chips.
The rocket? Well, let’s just say I’ve seen popping popcorn reach greater heights. Thanks to a strong southwesterly breeze, it reached a height of maybe … 6 feet. There wasn’t even enough force to knock the plastic fin off.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!!!” my mother wailed. “It was supposed to go up 50 feet!”
“Yeah, well, at least we didn’t injure any dogs,” I said. But their ears did perk up when she belted out, “Bri-ANNNNNE!!!”