Missed Connections

The morning after my high school graduation party, I awoke to the sound of a phone ringing downstairs. Utterly exhausted, I was stretched out on a futon. I looked at the clock. It was three in the afternoon. I had spent the whole night driving home drunk friends, so they wouldn’t get into any accidents. Some of them hadn’t wanted to quit until late. I spent a few minutes laying on the futon, staring at the ceiling. Yawning, my jaw cracked, and I decided that it was time to get up no matter how tired I was. My back popped as I sprang to my feet.With graduation freshly behind me, I figured high school hadn’t been so bad. With relatively little effort on my part, I had managed to graduate with several awards, including the departmental scholarships for math and science. All of my teachers had offered to write me letters of recommendation, and, rare as it might be, I was feeling good about myself. Tired, yet spiritually satisfied, I walked to the kitchen to make myself some breakfast.

Not even the sight of Rachel, sitting at the kitchen counter, doodling pictures on her arm, could bring me down. As usual, I ignored her. Grabbing a bowl, some cereal, and a gallon of milk, I prepared for my meal. Out the window, a sunny June sky promised longer days and brighter horizons. Without thinking about it, I began to smile.

Bent around her forearm with the posture of a toad, Rachel said, “Someone called for you, while you were sleeping.” In annoyance, I grunted at her disturbance.

“Was it the call I heard just a few minutes ago? I wasn’t sleeping.” It was typical that she hadn’t even thought to check.

“Yeah. It was some guy named Osh Kosh Begosh or something.”

I rolled my eyes. Rachel never took my messages properly. “That’s a brand of shoe. I don’t know anyone with a name like that.”

“Anyway, I told him you were asleep. He said he wouldn’t be able to call back since he was having a graduation at his college. I didn’t know you were hanging out with college guys, loser.” Likely, she just hadn’t wanted to check to see if I was awake as it might distract her from whatever she was drawing on her arm.

Pouring milk into my cereal bowl, I bit my tongue in contemplation. Usually, dropped messages didn’t concern me, but for some reason this one tugged at my mind. I didn’t know anyone in college, let alone anyone whose name sounded like Osh Kosh Begosh. Flakes of Life cereal submerged under waves of white milk as I continued my internal search. A revelation came over me so powerfully that I had to stop pouring for fear of spilling everywhere.

“Wait…are you sure it was a kid?” I was panting. My heart was hammering inside of my ribcage. It couldn’t be true. No way.

“He sounded kind of old, I guess.” I felt lightheaded.

Blinking as though I had been punched and was trying to regain my composure, I asked, “Did he say Dr. Osh Kosh Begosh?”

Rachel nodded noncommittally.

I gasped. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. “Holy shit!” I could barely stand. I grabbed hold of the counter for support.

Aberdeen has been the spawning ground of much strangeness. A thousand degenerates and murderers have sprung from it, redeemed by few geniuses. It was in Aberdeen that Kurt Cobain first conceived of Nirvana and began his path to international musical stardom. Yet years before Cobain, there had been a genius that only a few people seemed to recall. His very existence had shown me that there was a life outside of Aberdeen, if only I could escape to it. He was one of my heroes. The science department at Aberdeen high school had given me a scholarship named in his honor. It was only later I would find out that he had been calling to congratulate me. Douglas D. Osheroff. Dr. Douglas D. Osheroff, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Rachel had hung up on a Nobel Laureate.

A Nobel Laureate who had wanted to speak to me.

I felt half-crazed, with the enormity of it, the way ancient peoples must have felt upon witnessing an eclipse. For a moment, an entirely separate level of reality had converged upon mine, and through no real fault of my own, I had missed it. I began to speak random strings of nonsense words, sprinkling such phrases “super-cooled,” “studied super-fluidity in Helium!” as well as an occasional “you whore!” for good measure.

Rachel snorted at me, and continued to doodle on her arm. “I still don’t see what the big deal is.” My raving had not penetrated the caveman-like thickness of her skull.

All at once, I roared, “The man won THE NOBEL PRIZE! And he wanted to speak to ME!” I quivered with indignant rage.

Pausing for a moment from her doodles, Rachel look up, completely puzzled at my anger. “What the fuck is the Nobel Prize?”

I never got to speak to Dr. Osheroff. Ever.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Okay, I just stepped back in front of my computer, and apparently about five people sent him a link to this story. I’ll be away most of the weekend, but I just wrote to him to apologize for the extra mail in his inbox. Thank you guys for trying to help me out like this, though I can’t say I wouldn’t have been happier had I died knowing that at no point had I ever made a Nobel Laureate read the word “Fuck.” Still, thank you all for trying to help me out like this. It was very nice of you.