The Chemistry Set

Years ago, a popular gift for Christmas was a chemistry set. My brother got one. We looked at all the bottles filled with these magic powders dreaming of potions we could create that would cure all the ailments of the world. Our malevolent sides conjured up mixtures that would create spells that would give us power over the universe. All we had to do was get the right combination in our living room lab.

Of course, we never read the instruction book. In fact, I don’t even know there was an instruction book. We certainly didn’t use it.

We put a dash of this and a sprinkle of that in the mixing pot, added a little of this and a pinch of that, then added water. Usually it would look pretty boring, but we would get out the most important part of the experiment, the litmus paper. This would tell you whether we had created something alkaline or acid. We would slip it in our mixture and look in awe as the paper changed before our eyes. After that, we just usually washed our creation down the sink. Who knows, we might have created the cure for cancer with this seven-dollar chemistry set.

It didn’t take us long to get bored with the contents of the box. We wanted to be more creative. We started looking for things around the house that we could mix with our sorcerer’s kit. We decided vinegar would be good.

Carefully we measured our powders in the beaker. Ah, just right. Then we added the vinegar. Whoosh! The whole mixture erupted like a volcano. Suspecting it to be an acid, my brother put the beaker down on the first surface he could find. It was the arm of our living room chair. He was right. It was acid. It was strong acid. It burned a hole right through the arm of the chair. It resembled the lawn chairs you see today with cup holders on the side.

What were we to do? I knew what I was going to do immediately. Noticed how I used the pronoun we a lot so far. Well, I suddenly realized that it was my brother’s chemistry set and it was he who did all of the mixing. I asked him, “What are YOU going to do?”

“Quick,” he said, “Let’s get a towel and put it over the hole. Maybe Mom won’t notice it.” That’s just what he did.

My brother would have had better luck waving a red cape in front of a bull and not having it notice it than my mother not seeing that towel. Maybe he was hoping that when the towel was lifted the chair arm would be magically healed.

It didn’t happen. Mom came in and asked, “What’s the towel doing on the chair?” My brother said, “Towel? What towel?” Brilliant reply. A deft flick of the wrist by my Mom revealed the awful truth. She truly didn’t know what to say for a millionth of a second.

“What in the world were you doing playing in the living room with that chemistry set? Why didn’t you use the kitchen?” My brother nodded. That would have been a good idea. I stood behind my mother out of the line of fire.

My mother was really disappointed. What upset her the most, though, was that we (yes, she figured I was in on it, too) tried to hide what we had done from her, especially when it was so obvious. She could accept the fact that we would make mistakes like most young boys. She felt hurt that we didn’t have the confidence in her and character to admit our mistake openly before she had to ask.

That armchair became part of the folklore of our family. It was the chair my father sat in all of the time to watch television.

Sometimes we burn holes in our lives, too. I have found that it is far better to admit that you have made a mistake than try to cover it up with a towel, particularly when you know it is so obvious. People are usually very willing to forgive. It is better to ask for forgiveness and gain their trust by being honest, even when the news is not that good.