The Surly Bonds

Chapter 5

February 3, 1984. 3:00PM. The liberating sound of the school bell rings throughout the grounds of JFK Elementary. Within seconds, students pour out of the building like a deluge. Annie opts to walk very slowly while other students run around her. She clutches a piece of paper covered in red ink and walks along a row of cars lined up on the curb, head focused on the concrete sidewalk below her. A voice shouts, "Hop in, kiddo."

Annie looks up, first to her left, then to her right. She notices the 1978 Blue Dodge Challenger parked in front of a fire hydrant. Her frown is soon upgraded to a smile as she sees her mother sitting inside the car. "Mom!" she cries out in sheer joy.

Annie opens the door and removes her backpack. She places it on the floor of the passenger's side, and jumps in. Her hand quickly grabs the seatbelt, and the sound of the click triggers Mary to pull out of her spot. She quickly looks over her left shoulder and firmly presses down on the gas pedal. The tires screech as they struggle to find traction, but in an instant the car zooms out of the parking spot and onto the road. Mary effortlessly adjusts the steering wheel, slightly swerving. Annie bounces in the passenger's seat, giggling and smiling wide. Mary puts on her seatbelt with both hands, utilizing her knees to control the steering wheel. Mary asks, "Did you miss me?"

"So much! It's been so boring without you here. Are you back for good?" Annie implores, unable to sit still.

"For the time being. Right now they want me at my old job, working on another space shuttle."

Annie beams with excitement. "Really? Another one?"

"It's going to be the last one I work on."

"No more after that?"

"Maybe in the future, but currently they do not have any plans to build another one. They're meant to be reusable." Mary removes her eyes from the road for a split second as she glances at a crumbled piece of paper in Annie's hands. "What 'cha got there, kiddo?"

"Nothing," Annie says as she shoves the paper into her backpack.

"Doesn't look like nothing."

"It's just a stupid math test."

"Your father told me you're having trouble in math."

"It's too hard."

"Now that I'm back in my old office, I'll be around a lot more to make sure you don't fall behind. Soon you'll be a math ace!"

"I just want to get past fractions and decimals. They're so stupid and pointless."

Annie pulls the math test out of her bag. She opens the wrinkled paper. Mary remarks, "If you want to go into space, provided that's still what you want..."

"I do!"

"Then you need to excel in math, not wing it and hope for the best. Fractions are important. Decimals, too. Without them, we wouldn't have been able to get to the moon. I know it seems unimportant to you now, but you'll be glad you know it later on."

"But why do I need math to go into space?"

"Any ordinary person can be strapped to a rocket and get shot into space, but it takes a very intelligent person to utilize concepts of math and science to applications in zero gravity."

"But Sally Ride was an ordinary person, and she got to go into space."

"She's also a physicist."

"A physicist? What do they do?"

"They deal with everything around you. Time, gravity, laws of motion. All things we take for granted, and all things that require math to understand."

"I have to be a physicist if I want to go into space?"