The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy

     Matthew said, “I couldn’t get to sleep at night because I couldn’t stop thinking about the question. My mother told me to try thinking about something else, so I did, but whatever I tried thinking about would turn into thinking about the question. Every time.” ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscrib...

IN THE HALL, I threw myself into the usual chaos of kids hurrying for their lockers before catching their buses for home, bumping against one another, rebounding, bumping into someone else, bouncing with a Brownian shuffle. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

     “If most of us is empty space,” said Marvin, “then something small enough could travel through that empty space.” He paused, and in the pause he turned toward Nicky, just barely turned. It was so slight a movement that no one could have accused him of deliberately addressing his next remark to Nicky. Then he said, “It could go right through you.” ... Get full access to The Personal History, A...

     Nicky turned toward me and rolled his eyes. “So I say to Miss Rheingold, ‘Can we answer a question with a question?’     “And she says, ‘Only if you answer the question that you use to answer the question.’     “So I say, ‘What question are those guys working on?’ Meaning you guys.     ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterl...

WHEN THE GROUPS MET for the first time, a couple of days later, Miss Rheingold told us to spend the period discussing our questions. We didn’t have to come to any particular decisions at this first session, she explained. All we had to do was “make a start.” When those of us who had figured out that we were in the where-do-you-stop group brought our chairs into a circle around a table, we saw that...

     I wanted to ask one more question before I left, so I stopped at Miss Rheingold’s desk, where she sat on the edge watching the class converge on the door, pass through it, and expand into the hall. “Venturi,” she muttered. “Miss Rheingold?” I said.     She pressed a hand to her honeydew brow. “Peter,” she said. “I hope this isn’t another question about mousetraps.” ... Get full access to The...

     The film ended. The fluorescent lights stuttered and flickered into life.     “We just have time for a few questions,” said Miss Rheingold.     Hands shot up all over the room. Miss Rheingold beamed with pleasure and satisfaction.     “Yes, Spike,” she said.     “How do they get those Ping-Pong balls to stay on the mousetraps like that?” ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures...

THE MOVIE Miss Rheingold showed us was called Quanto the Minimum . It was developed, or at least sponsored, by the telephone company, and it featured a tiny cartoon character, Quanto the Minimum himself, who explored the constitution of matter as it was then understood. Try as I might, I’ve been unable to scare up a copy of this film to review for this book, so I will have to rely on memory to sum...

I ARRIVED IN GENERAL SCIENCE the following Monday expecting the next step in the development of our questions and group work. I’m sure we all expected that. We expected continuity. Continuity was what we had been taught to expect, and we had learned the lesson, ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

     “Well,” I said, “let’s see.” Mentally I scanned my new experiences, looking for one that would appeal to Porky. It didn’t take long for me to spot exactly the one. “There’s a new science teacher,” I said. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

PORKY WAS SITTING in one of the wooden booths, flipping through some papers that I took to be bills of lading. I took them to be bills of lading not because I had any firsthand experience with bills of lading, but because I had encountered the term in my ramble through the unshelved books in the library, liked the sound of it, and welcomed an opportunity to use it, almost as much as I did splines...

I SPENT MANY HOURS in the library before I admitted to myself that I wasn’t likely to find the answer to Miss Rheingold’s question in the books that were considered useful for students in the seventh grade. I had browsed pretty thoroughly, and I’d learned some interesting things along the way, but I didn’t feel any closer to the answer than I had been when I’d first slipped in through the boiler r...

     My immediate problem, as I now see it, was that I had acquired over the years a number of overly simple ideas, ideas based on a view of the surface of things only, and they had become too firmly rooted in my mind—the solar-system model of the atom, for example, and the sectioned-map view of social boundaries, that sort of thing. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experie...

     In those days I was convinced that I was surrounded by opportunities for doing the wrong thing, and I knew from experience that I usually didn’t even notice I’d seized one of these opportunities until it was too late. The difference between the right thing and any of a million wrong things often seemed so tiny as to be nearly invisible. Anything might trip you up, and it was more likely to be...

I BEGAN MY RESEARCH the very next weekend. I’ve always been conscientious about such things. Give me an assignment and I get right down to it. I was one of those children who ate the lima beans first and saved the mashed potatoes for last, as a reward. I postponed work on the lighthouse until I had at least made a good start toward answering the question. ... Get full access to The Personal Histor...

THAT NIGHT, I got on the phone right after dinner. It took hours, but by the end of the evening I had identified at least some of the members of every group. A competition had developed when kids decided that anyone who succeeded in figuring out all the members of the groups would get on the good side of Miss Rheingold. As a result, ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experien...

“WELL, PETER, how was it?” my father asked that evening, calling me from the bathroom where he had been soaking his hands free of gasoline and grease from the gas station where he worked. This procedure had fascinated me since I had first seen it as a child. It produced iridescent swirls on the surface of the water in the sink. My original thought had been that this was its purpose, and that mista...

     One at a time we came to the front of the room, reached into the fishbowl, and drew a slip of paper.     When I bring to mind the moment when I reached into the bowl to get my question, I experience it all again, not as memory, but as a repetition of the immediate data of experience. I am there. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy...

     Having caught our attention, she delivered a brief talk about the value and importance of science and the adventure in learning that we were about to undertake. I’ve forgotten nearly all the details of this talk—in fact, as I attempt to reconstruct it now, it seems to be largely about legs, which I know can’t be correct— Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Obser...

     “What do you think, Sylvester?” asked Miss Rheingold, glancing again at the class list.     “Biff,” said Biff.     Behind me, Nicky Furman said, “ Sylvester ?”     “All right,” said Miss Rheingold. “Biff.”     Biff said, “Millions of miles?”  ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

BY THE TIME I reached general science, my last class that first day, I was in a state of high bafflement. I filed into the room with the others, found a seat, sat, took one look at the teacher, and sank into an enchanted gape. She was astonishing. She was blond, and she had, to use the terminology of the time, a gorgeous figure. I can’t be certain just what the other kids were thinking, but she in...

     Fourth, and possibly most bewildering of all, we were made to change classes. When our day’s bout with one subject had ended, we got up and left the room, and went to another, similar, room where we tussled with another, different, subject. What an enormous change this was. In the past, when we had spent nearly the entire school day in one room, we had drifted from one subject to the next, on...

     Third, there was imposed upon us a baffling new nomenclature. This frightening change made everything we were to study seem like an unfamiliar subject. Arithmetic had become “mathematics,” and the word provoked an immediate mental image for me: a tightly wound spring, straining, powerful, dangerous. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter L...

WHEN SCHOOL OPENED, I entered the building through the front door with all the other students and immediately felt a great loss. The building was now available to just about anyone. Its hallways rang with the clatter and din of a vulgar horde—a vulgar horde composed largely of my friends, it’s true, but they seemed like invaders nonetheless. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures,...

     “We can wipe up the footprints with our shirts,” I said.     “Yeah, but that’s only part of the problem,” said Raskol. “We’ve left our footsteps in the dust on the terrazzo. We’re going to have to put it back the way it was.”     “What?”     “We’re going to have to rearrange the dust,” he said. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy...