All Things Considered

by Steve Ciarcia

'm getting a little long in the tooth now, but I can remember being a kid and my relatives asking, "What do you want to do when you grow up, Steve?" I'm not sure whether they were genuinely interested or whether they had some skepticism that I'd actually make it to adulthood. Of course, back then we didn't have as many of today's behavioral restrictions or statutory impediments. In truth, if most of us look back at the things we did in our "technically inquisitive" growth stages and applied today's conformity-conscious climate, many of us would be serving five to ten.

I always wanted to be an engineer. In high school, when I hardly knew the difference between professions, I usually answered the what-do-you-want-to-be question with, "a chemical engineer." I was moderately enthused about chemistry, and chemicals were certainly easier to get and cheaper for "experiments" than the conventional sources for ICs. Destiny worked against that career pursuit, however. The first message in the mist (literally) was that little rocket fuel experiment I did one afternoon in the high school chemistry lab. To this day I swear someone switched potassium chlorate for the potassium nitrate I was fusing together with sugar to make the propellant. It wouldn't have been so bad if the firemen had just opened all the doors rather than breaking the windows….

The second message came in the form of peer obligation, and yes, Danny Boy, there were people around who were crazier than me. I had a mad-scientist reputation (I'll bet you never would have guessed that) and I was always building electronic gadgets. Always eager to make a buck on my expertise, I took an order from a fellow student to make an electronic timer. It seemed simple enough, all he wanted was a circuit that could be set from 0 to 1 hour with one-second precision and would fire a flashbulb at the end of a wire when it timed out.

Of course, he didn't want to pay until he tested it. I suppose I should have been a little more concerned about the location, but a deal is a deal. Out in the middle of the woods he stopped and pointed to a rock outcropping and said, "Put the flashbulb there and string a wire back a hundred feet or so and put the timer next to it." I dutifully did as instructed and then came back. He pulled out a 5-lb bag of white crystalline powder and a pint of oily looking liquid and mixed them together. The consistency was like moist sand. Finally, he pulled out a little plastic pill bottle with about half an inch of white powder in the bottom. He stuck the AG1 flashbulb in the powder, stuffed some putty in on top of it, and then pushed the pill bottle into the bag of wet powder. "OK, let's go!" he said as he jumped up and started running toward the timer end. I didn't have to be a real engineer to realize the purpose of my timer!

"What was that last stuff in the pill bottle?"

"Lead Azide." he said matter of factly. The term "chemical experiments" instantly took on a whole new meaning. That was the stuff they put in blasting caps.

Before I could protest, he had the wires attached to the timer and had set it for five minutes. In retrospect, I realize that he had never asked if the timer worked. He just attached the wires and yelled "Run!" We stopped about 350 feet from the timer and hid behind some rocks. Taking a breath, I nervously added a little levity, "Well, at least we don't have to wait an hour."

"We wouldn't have to anyway. That mixture isn't stable that long!"

"Holy mackerel," I thought, "what have I got myself into?" Before I could finish analyzing how the present situation was undoubtedly accelerating my reputation from merely being "that science guy" to being on the list of "most wanted", there was a giant explosion. The blast was so powerful my ears were ringing. I looked up and noticed that a boulder thrown by the blast had sheared off a 6" diameter tree trunk three feet above my head. There was a 6' deep crater in front of the outcropping.

"What the @#$% was that?" I yelled. Acrid smoke surrounded me and dirt was still falling from the sky.

"Nitrobenzene with an oxygen accelerant. Not bad, huh?" All I could think was that everyone in Eastern Massachusetts had probably heard the blast. Hanging around this kid could be bad for my health.

So why am I telling you all this now? It's really a reaction to all the people who write to me or come up to me at shows and thank me for inspiring them to be engineers. While I truly appreciate the compliments, I don't let it go to my head. In fact, if anything, those kinds of comments make me feel like I should go out of my way to remind everyone that I made lots of mistakes on my way to being an engineer.

I also tend to criticize our overly obtrusive society norms. In truth, I wonder how I would have turned out if I had to deal with today's evaluation of my behavior as a youth. I'd even like to say that I learned not to play with dangerous things after the experience I just related, but that wasn't the case. It took a third traumatic message to set me on the straight and narrow. But, that's a story for another time.

Somehow after all the experiences, both good and bad, I think I turned out OK-certainly good enough to have affected a few people positively. My personal evolution leads me to wonder if we react too severely today. I wonder if the Steve Ciarcias of today have a chance to clean up their act before society puts them in a rubber room. This isn't a trick question and I don't have an answer. I'm just troubled that it might be reality.