The Engineer Strikes Back

I’m mad as a hornet. This whole stupid Engineer-Day-at-the-Adventure-Science-Center thing was completely fucked up from Jump Street.

The whole deal took place in a big, open conference room where 10 or 12 companies and organizations had set up tables with displays and hands-on activities for the kids to participate in, learn something about engineering, and burn off the tons of excess sugar and caffeine their spineless parents were powerless to prevent them from consuming.

As I mentioned, our whole shtick was “lift and drag,” which was just retarded for us to begin with because we design buildings, not airplanes. There isn’t a sonofabitch in the company that knows a thing about aeronautical engineering, yet there we were standing in front of a giant poster touting the principles of flight, looking like a bunch of douche wads.

To make matters worse, about 10 minutes before I left the house I got on the internet to Google “how do planes fly,” only to find out that everything I learned in school and everything we were supposed to tell the kids about lift and drag was completely wrong. Without boring the shit out of you, the basic accepted explanation of lift is based on Bernoulli’s principle, which essentially defines the characteristics of fluid dynamics. While the principle itself is accurate, it’s far too trite to explain the theories behind lift. Instead you need to go back to Newton’s laws, which really muddy the waters and… all right, whatever. My life is a miserable, boring joke and I don’t’ even find this stuff interesting. The point is, 10 minutes before I was going to stand in front of a bunch of impressionable kids I found out everything I was supposed to tell them was nothing but a convenient lie because the truth was too hard to explain. I felt like a Republican. I was better off getting in there and being like, “Listen kids, I know you came here to learn about engineering but instead I’m going to tell you about how Santa Claus doesn’t really exist…”

Fortunately children have the attention span of children and they couldn’t give two shits about how a plane flies.

I can’t say the same for the parents though. At one point I was sitting there and some ass-rocket of a father comes moseying on by and says to me, “Isn’t it Bernoulli, not Bernoull?”

I looked back at him with equal parts contempt and confusion, “Yeah?”

“Your poster says Bernoull. It’s supposed to be Bernoulli.”

I turned around and fuck me if there wasn’t a typo right there under a picture of Daniel Bernoulli. “Hey kids! Today we’re going to learn about Greg Washington, the first President of the United States of Americuh!”

Whatever, so there’s a fucking misspelling on our poster, so what. Well the guy wouldn’t let it go so I decided to drop some knowledge on his cranium. “You know,” I said, “Bernoulli’s equation doesn’t accurately describe the principles behind lift; we actually need to go back to Newton for that…”

“Yes it does,” he interrupted, “It’s also how a carburetor works.”

Holy shit, I almost turned that guy inside out. I was furious. Whenever his kid gets beat up on the playground he deserves it because his dad is a raging turd.

Anyway, like I said, our activity involved making gliders out of paper and straws, which was in fact as retarded as it sounds. Even the best made paper and straw glider was only capable of flying in a straight line for 15, 20 feet, tops. Most kids’ gliders took a nosedive directly into the ground. After the first 5 minutes I got so tired of seeing the kids’ faces as they came up to the table all precocious and full of wonderment and then after 30 seconds of making their glider they were like, “Really? This is it? We paid 12 bucks to get in here and we just made a shitty glider out of supplies you picked up at McDonalds? This is a joke right?”

Plus, I was working the third of three shifts so when I go there things were in full swing. We were running low on tape so I went to the extra supply box to get some more and what did I find? The entire stack of paper I had cut and the entire stack of straws I unwrapped, sitting in the box, completely unused. Holy shit, I almost had an aneurism. I spent 40 minutes of my life working on that stuff, cutting enough paper to make a glider for every child in Somalia, and apparently so did everyone else participating in engineering day. We had enough materials for thousands of children. Again, I was furious.

To make matters worse, the fucking Aeronautical Engineering Department at Vanderbilt was there as well and while we were making the ridiculously amateurish gliders, they were having the kids make paper airplanes, but not the stupid paper airplanes that you and I learned how to make as a kid; these were badass origami flying machines that could do loops, and barrel rolls and all kinds of fancy bullshit. I looked over to their table to see a pile of our stupid fucking gliders discarded beneath it as the kids quickly realized how awesome the paper planes were in comparison to the gliders.

At one point I was sitting at our table, minding my own business, contemplating my career choice, when a goddamn paper airplane landed right on our table in front of me. I looked over to see the whole group of pimply-faced aeronautical engineering students giggling and mocking me, challenging me to throw one of our gliders back at them. Instead I just threw their airplane back… after I wrote on the wing, “Good luck getting laid… ever.”

Worse than the aeronautical engineers, our table was located right next to a table that was attended by Miss Tennessee. That’s right – Miss-fucking-Tennessee. Does anybody want to tell me what in the hell she was doing there because I couldn’t figure it out? And do you know how I knew it was Miss Tennessee? She was wearing her goddamn sash! I am not making this up. I don’t even know what activity was taking place at her table; all she needed to do was smile and wave and the whole goddamn room got sucked into her pearly white teeth like Sirens luring us to our death.

Now at this point I know you’re all saying, this couldn’t possibly get any worse. Oh, you’re more wrong than the carburetor guy. It got worse. Much, much worse. Just as I was showing some kid how to make a stupid fucking glider, who should come rolling in like he was the king of the universe but R2-fucking-D2! No shit. A real life, fully functional, rolling, head spinning, robot-talking R2D2! You don’t believe me???

The guy operating the remote controls just stood off to the side so the kids had no idea. They thought it was really R2D2, flocking to it like doctors to a tapeworm at a gastroenterological conference. Shit, even I ran over to it, knocking three kids out of the way. It was phenomenal. Not even Miss Tennessee’s free-form dance routine could draw anyone’s attention away from R2.

By the time the whole thing was over I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

On the bright side, the kids seemed to have a legitimately fun time. I don’t know that any of them were persuaded to become engineers, especially when they’d walk by and I’d whisper, “Hey; hey kid. Look at me. Look at my face. You don’t want to end up like this. Go into pharmaceuticals…” but at least they were able to get away from their video games for a short while and actually do something constructive.

Speaking of which, one kid was wearing a shirt that said, “My perfect day: 1. Get up, eat breakfast; 2. Play video game; 3. Eat lunch; 4. Play video games; 5. Eat dinner; 6. Play video games; 7. Go to sleep,” and I could tell he didn’t just wear the shirt because he liked the color. He was all pale and gaunt like a Gitmo prisoner and I could tell that Johnny Klebitz of Grand Theft Auto IV was his only friend.

At least that was better than the kid in the sleeveless t-shirt that said, “My dad is the man.” I hate to break it to you kid, but your dad isn’t the man; he’s a redneck.