I was leaving the apartment to go and get some groceries. The door two apartments down the hall open and the little neighbour boy stuck out his head and looked at me. He is maybe five now, his mother just had a baby sister. He loves Monsters Inc. and often quotes lines from the movie while wiggling the large blue furry guy in the elevator. “Hello, How are you?, how are your parents?” He was looking at me as if he had heard the noise of the door and wanted to make sure there was a familiar face. “Mom went to the doctor, and we are waiting for her now.”
I told him to close the door and not to open it for strangers.
When I was a little boy I would spend days alone in the apartment. My dad was there, but I only remember him asleep, as he worked the nightshift just to spend the days with me (It does not work.) So as my dad was trying to recharge his batteries I would spend days working on my experiments. We lived on the 8th floor and I would experiment with gravity a lot. Water when thrown out of the window in one jelly piece, does not arrive on the ground as such, it turns to rain. It breaks in two, then four then thousands of drops that take a while to hit the ground, just enough time to hide and close the window. For some reason my rain kept hitting the windows on the lower floors, so I had to move my experiments from the street side to the side, which faced the playground. (People did not worry as much getting water on their balconies, I guess.)
I noticed that if I attached the right amount of toothpaste to a plastic brick and threw it against the neighbour’s window in the right angle, not only would the piece stick quite well to the glass, it would also look as if somebody from a much higher floor in the building had thrown it.
Pushing clay through the curtains made nice textures which were very useful in model making.
The best wheels for a car in a collage are “hidden” in the knee area fabric of the pants. They can be cut out carefully without taking off the pants.
Burning plastic cups over an open gas stove flame in the kitchen makes special smelly black snow that can later be smeared into various fantastic shapes.
Nail polish remover burns with an invisible flame. It burns best in the bathtub and when poured over magazines.
Ball point pen makes a really smooth line on a linoleum floor.
There were other experiments which I will discuss in a separate post.
The lady in the grocery store gave me an extra bag for the eggs. “You know how you men are.” (She really said that.) “Oh, yes, we are like that already as boys.” I thought. I did not think I would be able to explain the context in the 3 seconds I had to reply to her comment.
I will try to see what I can make with all the food I just bought. The experiment continues.