Gravity Sets the Mood

While researching random prospects on the donor database, I found myself in a definite set routine. Luckily, conducting this research made time, somehow, fly by extremely fast (and I assure you it was not one of those “time flies when you’re having fun” things). After plowing through a couple dozen names and looking up any contact report comments or general giving history patterns, I glanced at the time and it was already post 5 o’clock. I suddenly became Fred Flintstone and yelled “Yaba daba do!” and slid off my long neck dinosaur… that is not entirely true. I walked to the bus stop.

With the summer schedule already set, the buses are not as frequent as they were during the academic year. A bus finally came after a good fifteen-minute wait. I came aboard and about four feet in I suddenly trip. Another passenger had some sort of basket/suitcase item that was in the walkway of the bus. I slammed my body hard on the ground; luckily nothing bad happened to me besides my dignity being shattered. I heard the bus driver ask if I was alright.

The second after my horizontal transformation I heard laughter from one of the passengers and this passenger was actually right by my landing zone. I rose and saw the person and, my god, she was the most beautiful person I have seen in, at least, a few years (this is one of those movie moments where the light around her is really vibrant and a gush of wind comes out of nowhere). I ask her if I could sit next to her so I could hide my shame from the rest of the bus and she agrees. I think I was slightly shaken by my pull to the earth because I usually would never even try to sit close to an extremely attractive woman (please read my fear list from a month or so ago where I describe attractive women as my number 4, or maybe it’s number 3, fear).

My fellow passenger brought to my attention on why she was laughing. She had in her lap a notepad with various crazy Einstein looking notes; she said she was wrapping up her notes on a lecture she is going to help conduct on gravitational waves. She then asked if I knew what those were. At this point, I flashbacked onto my wedding encounter where the cute girl Yuriko asked if I knew what music therapy was.

“Um, is that when the moon is full and the tide is at its highest?” apparently I am extremely funny when I am extremely ignorant because this girl was laughing.

She cured my ignorance with a brief explanation on gravitational waves, which according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, the force of gravity is due to the curvature of spacetime; this curvature is caused by the presence of massive objects. Roughly speaking, the more massive the object is, the greater the curvature it causes, and hence the more intense the gravity. As massive objects move around in spacetime, the curvature will change. If the objects move around in the right way, ripples in spacetime can spread outward like ripples on the surface of a pond. These ripples are gravitational waves. She sort of said this but I had to use Wikipedia to assist on the wording of this as I write my story.

Basically, she was amused because as she was wrapping up her notes, she sees this tall guy, who represents a decent amount of mass and then is suddenly a victim of gravity. So, due to my tallness, the more intense gravity there was. I then explained that I was nine pounds and eleven ounces when I was born, measuring at twenty-five inches. This probably led to the reason why my mother’s labor experience was so short (starting at around 1am and then my arrival right before 7am) since this massive amount of mass came out of her and the earth’s gravitational pull was doing its part.

She put her hand out and introduced herself as Nikki and I followed back with Peter. Nikki said she was a TA for the summer session physics class; I said I was a digital text engineer. Lie! Just riding off of my wedding story! No, I explained what I did on campus. She went into some more detail about her physics knowledge and I sort of tuned her out. I kept thinking of my perceptions of beauty and what causes them to be even more enhanced. Last weekend I saw a series of local bands perform, and in some of them were female singers, and I thought, “Wow, they’re pretty. Wow, they can sing. I can’t sing. Wow, they play the guitar, that’s really hot. I can’t play guitar.” So with Nikki, my thoughts ran as, “Wow, she knows physics. She’s really pretty. She’s smart. I don’t know physics. I can tell her the speed of objects as they fall to earth’s gravity. She’s pretty.” Imagine my voice sounding like a six year old boy as these words traveled through my head. Basically, if the woman is pretty, that’s good right there, but if she does something that I can’t do or does something really impressive; that makes the beauty go into some exponential rate.

I figured she was getting off at the Science Hill/Engineering bus stop, which, unfortunately, was coming very soon. I became very self-conscious at this point because those thoughts were rolling through my head; I heard all those things like asking her for her number, something! But I backed out. However, I don’t think it was due to my usual list of excuses, this one was due to the whole bus atmosphere. The bus was pretty full and was getting even more full as we explored the campus. So, I didn’t want to be that guy on the bus who asks out some girl. The worst part would have been her declining and that I have to be that guy on the bus who got rejected. No good, I say.

I wished her luck on her gravitational waves lecture and she exited the bus. When the bus got to the College 8/Porter bus stop, a cool hipster got on board and sat near me. He pulled out a book and began reading. I glanced at the cover and it was Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Damn you, gravity!

I declared Nikki as my gravitational angel who I may never see again. Now, I’ve got to make sure that I get on the Route 10 bus at 5:33 pm outside of the Lower Campus bus stop, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll cross paths with her again.