Science, and Why People Hate It

Here's this Monday's card, everybody. It's perfect for the person in your life who you're attracted to like a thing with ions to another thing with ions or a flux line or whatever.

I can't think about chemowlstry without thinking of a class I took in high school once, called IPC (Integrated Physiques and Chemistrars.) The one thing I remember from IPC (and I do mean the ONE THING) was a rhyme my teacher taught the class.

Do what you oughta...
Pour acid to wat-ah.

This, clearly, is insane. Why is this the one thing I remember? Was this more important than noble gases? Was this of greater necessity than valence what-have-yous and moles that aren't moles at all, but numbers that are far too asinine to bother with? YOU CAN'T EVEN MAKE A COAT OUT OF THEM. How will this keep my daughter warm when she's locked in a haunted basement? No, the one thing I remember is "Do what you oughta; acid to wat-ah." Has anyone ever said "do what you oughta" by itself before? It doesn't usually act on it's own; it's more like "do what you oughta be doing to get 'dese ghouls outta my basement." No one has ever instructed me to simply "do what I oughta."

So, to get revenge on my teacher, I plan on burning my eyes out with acid!

Here's the deal; if I burn my eyes out with acid and find my teacher, and claw blindly at her screeching like a skinned mole in a haunted basement, she'll realize that something went wrong with my life, and it was because of her. Naturally, she'll knock me to the ground with an umbrella before I have a chance to scratch her face too badly. As I land, I'll curl up into a mole-ball, allow whatever excretia one would expect to excrete to do so, and say, in a very hissy, acid-singed voice,

"Did I do what I oughta?"

These will be my last words.

I'll die in the entrance of the Bath and Body Works (this is happening at a mall, by the way) and a small crowd will have gathered. The people will gather, murmuring things like "Do what he oughta? What does that mean?" or "That poor acid covered man must have not been taught chemistry properly" or "Can I get through, please?" and my IPC teacher will simply shake her head.

"He didn't do what he oughta," she'll say, "but that doesn't mean that I can't."

In a sign of piety and reverence, she'll place two pennies on my throbbing, acid-soaked eyelids. The pennies will then start fizzing and a bunch of 9th graders will record that as an observation.