Growing up in Galveston

It didn't take me very long to make a decision. As soon as I could make a sound, immediately after the doctor slapped me on the behind and announced, "It's a girl," I yelled. I most certainly did not cry, I simply let out an ear-piercing yell.

What could possibly be so important that with my first breath in this world I felt it necessary to scream the words?

As soon as I was born, I yelled, "I was born to be an artist." The doctors, nurses and my unconscious mother, were quite surprised.

I was B.O.I. (born on island) and spent the first few years of my life in Galveston. I grew up in this big old house built in the 1800s before the hurricanes hit that wiped out Galveston Island, but luckily for me the house survived otherwise I would have had to live underwater like a fish.

The house survived but the parrot did not. He went down with the ship (drowned in the house) yelling, "Dugan, Dugan, help me!" Dugan was his owner, my greatgrandfather, who could not help.

After the hurricane, the whole island was raised up on stilts, house after house was jacked up and bricks were put underneath to raise it up. Result no more drowned parrots and good news for me, the future, descendent.

You see when I was young there was no airconditioning in the summer heat of over 100 degrees with melting tar streets. I was forced to play outdoors in the only shade I could find which happened to be under the house. It was an okay place to play but the water pipes hanging down were brutal on young heads.

The best thing about growning up in Galveston was the beach. There I spent summers looking like a lobster with sunburned skin. But if you have never slept on a beach listening to the waves, watching the stars in the night sky, then I can tell you that looking like a lobster was well worth it.

To help the sunburn, my father with grab the cotton balls and dab my brother and I with Condensed Milk. It did not work! How on earth did he ever think that milk would take away the pain of sunburn. Maybe it helped the cows, it did not help me.

I spent my childhood with colors and paints, and fingers stuck together with glue, making models and paintings and winning prizes for my artwork.

A PINK boys bicycle which I promptly traded for a BLUE girl's bicycle. Why on earth would the store think a boy would want a pink bicycle and most important why would the store think that anyone would beat me...me who was born to be an artist.

I remember sitting on the floor beside my father waiting for him to light up his pipe. It was not the aroma that I wanted, it was the match. With that match and a little glue I could build models of anything. They don't make glue like they used to, the new age glue doesn't stick and the purpose of glue is supposed to be to stick things together. Dadgum "glue niffers" ruined it all.

And then the day came. THE DAY. I was off to college to formally study what I was born to do...ART

My mother looked at my application and proclaimed, "You cannot be an artist. There is no money in art. You shall be an ACCOUNTANT.

As anyone who has watched old reruns of television shows has been taught, "Father Knows Best." Except in my house it was, "Mother Knows Best."

My accounting teacher had a roving eye, I mean she had one eye that looked one way and another eye that looked a different direction. It was very unsettling. I never knew if she was staring at me or watching the blue sky outside the window.

Then one day I was saved. One of my teachers asked if anyone would like to take a computer class.

"Computers," my ears perked up, my eyes widened, my heart fluttered. My mother never said, "You can't make any money in computers."

I changed my major. Computers! Computers! Computers! I would be a computer programmer.

There was only one slight problem. There was not a degree in computer programming at the university I attended.

No problem. I did the only logical thing that any RED-blooded American student would do. I majored in MATHEMATICS.

I know, I know. Whenever anyone mentions the word "mathematics" today, students grow pale, their knees buckle, some cry, others beg. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, absolutely hates mathematics in the year 2005.

I found out one day that everyone in my networking class was in remedial mathematics. They had to take 4 math classes just to get to the first college math class. I made the mistake of mentioning that I had a math degree and was verbally attacked by 28 angry classmates.

But it wasn't 2005 when I was at the University of Houston and I loved mathematics. Calculus, the study of change, was my favorite course, and analytic geometry, and partial devrivatives, and then there was point set theory and linear algebra with my German professor spitting out his words and his TAN hushpuppies. I shall always remember staring at his shoes. I hated those shoes. Hushpuppies have made a comeback but I still cringe at the thought of those shoes of so long ago.

There were many days spent sitting under huge oak trees that roamed the campus. There were birds and bees and the excitement of learning. It isn't that I particularly liked the outdoors, it was just that my dormitory room was at the end of the hall and all the air conditioning rushed there and stopped. An igloo was probably warmer than my room. It was polar bear territory. I couldn't study there.

BROWN squirrels passed by on the lawn...they knew...they understood that I was doing something very, very exciting.

I roamed the campus looking for computer classes to take. I registered for a Fortran programming course at the Engineering Department and learned how to program all kinds of marvelous mathematical equations. Everyone thought I was an Engineer...the only female Engineer in the department. I had what the English would call Street Cred. I took a programming course at the Business Department and thought compared to the engineering department this is just too easy.

I learned about matrices and eigenvalues and about things you couldn't even see, or comprehend or visualize.

Four years later I graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematics.

It had been a few years since I had attended the university when I starting thinking how interesting it might be to study biochemistry. Saturday mornings I arose before dawn to drive into the university. I spent pleasant days mixing up chemical concoctions, burning my clothes with acid, and sometimes scaring the heck out of my teacher. Goggles on my eyes, gloves on my hands and hiding behind an apron, I looked like a creature from outer space. .

I remember one Saturday my lab partner and I were pouring chemicals into a flask on a bunsen burner. It was a beautiful shade of RED. I stared at the beauty of the mixture. My lab instructor came over and asked what we were doing. She seemed rather agitated. She informed us that the chemicals were not supposed to be RED, everyone else had a nice BLUE concoction in their distillation process. She had no idea of what we were boiling. She suggested that perhaps we should turn off our fire before we blew up the lab.

Notice the bio in biochemistry, a hint that I had to take biology classes. The GREEN dissecting kit. My biology classmate informed me that she was allergic to formaldyhyde. She announced that if she got around any formaldhyde she would swell up. I watched her anxiously as we piked our fetal pigs for dissecting. The little piglets were packed in formaldyhyde. I wasn't sure if my classmate was going to swell up and explode. I didn't know if I should run.

Instead of a froggie one Saturday we got to grind up a cow's brain in a blender to see what amino acids were there. I can assure that no "live" animals were hurt in this experiment. Don't call the animal cops. I never saw the cow. If you should meet a brainless cow, tell him I didn't do it.

Students must eat and so.... one of my classmates went searching through chemical cabinets to find some sugar to go in the tea she had heated to go with the scones she had made. She pulled a white crystal powder out of a cabinet. Said she was pretty sure it was sugar and proceded to pour it into my tea cup.

I can cetainly understand about peer pressure, I had a choice, I could drink the tea and die or I cold be called, "Chicken!" by my classmates.

Then the "sugar lady" handed me some scones. The scones had stones. Didn't she realize that when you put pecans in your cooking, she should first take off the pecan shells not grind them up in the batter. I wondered what else she put in the scones. Some other kind of lethal sugar?

One day I finally got a WHITE lab coat and spent my first day in the lab. Cut little white mice were running around in their cages. I ws ordered to go fix a yummy chemical dinner for some slim mold that I couldn't even see. When I returned the litte white mice had no little white heads.

I began to doubt my decision to become a biochemist. My Professor had to drive up to the lab every 3 hours at nigh to give shots to be angry rats..

Feeding things you couldn't see. Beheading things I could see. Being up all night with rats.

It was supposed to be the next Silicon Valley. That is until I got there and then it crashed. Austin, Texas. Hook 'um horns, 6th Street and the bars, the university of Texas. Austin seemed like a good place to learn the Java programming language. My instructor was an ex-IBM employee who really bonded with his students. When he got a cell phone call in the middle of class one night, he apologized and said he couldn't turn off his cell phone because he was was on call for emergency air service. He was a volunteer who could fly his plane in case of an emergency. I envisioned him receiving a call during class. He would put on his cape and goggles and fly off into the sunset on his newest air rescue. But the phone never rang even though I sat through 3 semesters of Java programming waiting for that phone call.

It was at this time I found out that people with years of programming experience and "used-to-have-high-paying" jobs were stacking groceries because there were no jobs in Austin. It just seemed like a good time to leave ...or starve. I think it was newspaper article I read in the Austin newspaper about people abandoning their Mercedes convertibles at the airport and just disappearing. That accelerated my moving... I didn't want to disappear. Where did they go?

Back I went to Houston, Texas. And then Enron crashed and the whole financial world went to .... well... Sometimes I drive downtown and look up at the Enron building and just shake my head. And then I drive away knowing that with all my programming knowledge somehow I missed the whole computer revolution.

Sometimes you just need to "walk on the wild side". I wanted a Harley. I wanted the open road. I wanted to growl and look tough. These things are imporant to people like me who are not even five feet tall. But.... I couldn't fit on a Harley. Dadgum chromosomes made me too little. I could not reach the ground and, believe me, with a million tons of metal on the motorcycle that could easily fall on top of me, I sure needed to touch the ground.

A Honda! A Honda! The Honda dealer handed me a brochure that showed the motorcycle riders in a monogramed button-downed shirt at a lemonade stand. I wanted image with capital letters. IMAGE! I did not want any pink lemonade.

If I couldn't get a motorcycle with a truckload of shiny chrome and I couldn't wear a black leather jacket with a black helmet and drink beer and..... and..... and..... well after much cogitation I decided the next best think to do was to buy an electric guitar.

I think when I really gave up the concept of the motorcycle was when I read an article in a magazine that said, when you were going fast on a motorcycle, something as little as a bumble could knock you off the bike. I thought it was okay if the bee went splat but not me. This just goes to show that sometimes reading can be good for your health.

Sooooooooooooo.............with my guitar I could play rock music or heavy metal or punk or all of them. I could dye my hair purple with brite yellow streaks, make it stand straight up on top of my head in a mohawk and scream bloody murder at the top of my lungs as I played. Power chords are not called power chords for no reason.

Fundamentals Clap, clap, clap Theory 4 part harmony, soprano, alto, tenor, bass. Piano Guitar Do re mi Do do do me me me Re do Fa fa fa Uh, I just want to play the guitar. Guitar class

Gotta go! It's registration time at the university and I am trying to decide between nuclear physics and topological spaces. In case you don't know anything about topology well....it is a method of turning one shape into another shape using mathematical equations. The classic example is changing a donut into a coffee cup. Personally I would rather have a donut. I don't drink coffee.

I suppose that one of these days I really should grow up and bid adieu to taking so many classes, but it is so darn interesting. Besides the squirrels at the university would miss me.