My Experiment With Lies

It was one hell of a field day for the butterflies as they were flying around merrily without any care in the world about the nausea they were causing me. They were bringing me down to my knees, making me hold back tears and making me tighten every muscle in the body for I was trying to put up a poker face. It was finally my turn and the professor was contemplating what experiment she had to give me for the final lab/practical exam of the semester.

She was taking her time as she seemed to be having fun looking at my frozen and yet sweaty face. Those stupid butterflies in my stomach compelled me to talk to myself, have all the fun you want now madam, for I am going to throw up all over, thanks to this nausea! Probably she heard what I was thinking because she immediately gave me my paper with the name of the experiment I was expected to do. I tried hard to read what was on the paper but she perhaps punched me on the face while giving me the paper for all I could see were stars and spots.

I sat down at the assigned spot and realized what experiment I would be doing. Got it! It was my lucky day again. I had no clue as to how to do that experiment, but I had the theory, graphs, equations, and the final result of the experiment memorized like always. I glanced at my friends - Hilarious how you guys suddenly put up the human version of ratatouille by running around, fighting against time, finding this and that to do whatever the hell that is!

I was sitting there looking at the antenna for which I had to find the radiation pattern. I switched the power on and the stupid antenna kept beeping intermittently and I pretended to be taking down the readings in sync. with the beeps. Those beeps marked a subtle change in angle for which you had to record the radiation and that way you could, blah, blah, blah. I had already written the damn result down to the third decimal and plotted the whole radiation graph from memory. Talk about accuracy, huh? Because I got it all figured it was time to relax and I started playing with my pen. For those of you sad people who do not know the bliss of being a James Bond with the pen instead of a gun, it is the art of rotating the pen between your fingers in a mind boggling way that gives you a high, higher than anything in the world with every rotation the pen makes.

The high was suddenly interrupted as I had to stoop low to find the pen. Once in a while it slips through, once in thousand times that is, just to keep the record straight. So I found it after about 2 minutes of navigating in the snake park (those stupid power cords under the table) and when I was up the whole room was along with the professor was looking at me. And I realized I missed the act I was doing for about 10 to 15 of those beeps. But I did not care. Stare at me all you want, but I am not going to start this thing all over because I missed the beeps. I got it anyway. Muhuahahahhaha! Finally it was time to give the paper to the professor.

She: “So how did you get the radiation pattern of a dipole antenna when you were sitting with the yagi-uda antenna?”

Me: “No Ma’am, the name of the experiment I got is dipole.”

She: “I know that. But the name of the apparatus you worked on is Yagi-Uda. So how the hell did you manage to observer the radiation pattern of the dipole or is this the radiation pattern of your rotating pen and not the antenna?”

Me: butterflies, stars, spots and bliss – darkness!