Air and Space

On Saturday, Jamal and I decided on a day trip to the National Air and Space Museum as our first outing in many weeks. As a child, my parents hauled me and my brothers out to the National Mall for a day full of ‘culture’ on numerous occasions. I have to admit, I dreaded most of our trips down there. With the exception of the Air and Space museum, I usually found counting the number of steps until I made it back to the Metro station more exciting than most of the other museum exhibits. I’m not sure if the museums have improved exponentially since then, or if I was just a knucklehead, because now I enjoy them almost as much as an afternoon of cereal and video games. I split an entire day last summer between two museums and saw only a fraction of what I had intended to. So given my new found enthusiasm for the Smithsonian exhibits, I just knew that Jamal would have to love it too. Who wouldn’t be amazed to see retired space craft suspended from a vaulted ceiling? Apparently, Jamal wouldn’t.
Always a fan of space travel, I decided that it would be best to start our visit on the ‘space’ side of the museum. As we approached each capsule, module, or rocket, I went into what must have been painful detail about its technological and historical significance. I tried my best to put everything in perspective on a level that I thought he could understand and appreciate. Regardless, about and hour into our tour I knew that Jamal was bored. How could he be bored? This was great stuff. Even as a kid I could see that, I think.
Eager to prevent his boredom from slowing the pace of the day’s events, I decided we should head to another museum. On our way out, Jamal asked me if we could stop by an exhibit called ‘How Things Fly’. Turns out it’s a room full of about 25 physics experiments made for children. They featured visitor controlled devices that demonstrated the principles of air flow, pressure, friction, and flight. I couldn’t believe that I had almost missed this room altogether. We ended up staying for another hour and a half so that we could tinker with all of the different contraptions and had an absolute blast. The evening wound down with Pizza back at my parents’ house before we drove back to Baltimore. Despite my attempts to explore Jamal’s plan for achieving straight A’s this quarter, our return trip conversation quickly turned into a discussion about the Justice League’s roster of heroes and a comparison of their powers. He’s definitely motivated, but I think I’m going to have to wait for his report card before we can have any meaningful discussions. No sweat for right now though, we’ll get there.