Remembering My Rocket Scientist Friend
Feeling eternally bad for not reaching out
NOT all our friends make us feel pretty special. But lucky me, I had one in Brett (not his real name) who, because he was who he was, made me think I was special. He deigned to make friends with me, you see.
Brett was a rocket scientist.
Yes, the kind that most of us, ordinary mortals, joked about to justify our less-than-genius IQ.
Brett didn’t look like a stereotyped egghead like Einstein. He was nowhere near, in looks and eccentricity, to the Doc Emmet Brown character of the Back to the Future films.
My friend was a regular guy. He had no airs, none of that looking-down-his-nose attitude. The jokes he cracked were either outrageously funny or ridiculously corny. Most important of all — for me — he could give a wee lecture on propulsion using layman’s language, with my less-than-genius IQ somehow able to grasp its principle.
We lost contact for a few years until I woke up one morning and the next, knowing that Brett was in my dreams. I couldn’t remember what the dream was about, nor why he would be in my dream. I just knew he was in the dream, and that made me unsettled for most of the day. As I prioritized my pressing deadlines at the time, it took me over a week before I…
