K.I.A.

K.I.A. highlights a light, cheerful, and funny moment that made me geniunely laugh after a long time.

I work in the lab. Every since I started my research this summer, I used to have the chemistry lab all by myself until recently, Marc - a freshman, who works under the chem prof. started showing up every afternoon. I have always noticed him as a very reticent person and I had never spoken to him before other than passing Hi(s) until this summer.

I had more knowledge of where things are stored in the lab, so I would help Marc find things and we started talking. One day, I was running a sodium fusion reaction when, in a split of second while I was thinking everything was going fine, one of the test-tube caught fire. It was because there were virgin sodium left after I thought I had burnt it all. I let out a huge scream (my huge screams are inherentely of lower decibel that perhaps wouldn't pass as a scream from a scientific point of view, nevertheless, it was a scream from my side). Marc came running from across the lab. I was shocked, scared, and yet I was finding it pretty hilarious of what had happened and was trying to explain it to him. In the middle of my explanation, I withdrew my eyes from the "test-tube on fire" to look at him and I saw his eyes fixated at my other test tube.


There were two test-tubes, one that I was holding in my hand (ofcourse with a clamp) and the other sitting on a stand. I had put methanol in both the test-tubes after I had burnt my compound so that it consumes the left over (if any) pure sodium. However, the reaction in the one that was sitting was extremely vigorous so that it looked pretty damn fascinating now that I think about it. I clearly remember the expression on Marc's face while he was looking at it (unfortunately, the victim of the incident didn't draw any attention from him...the burning test tube! haha..). The way he was looking at the other test-tube and the way I was still explaining about my other test tube somehow made me feel like kids. I felt like I had gone back to my childhood when you can't really hide the excitement of discovering something new, like when a friend and you would be walking and suddenly you would see a $10 note on the pathway..In such a moment you are both fascinated and at the same time, suspicious, hesitant, unsure whether to pick it up or not... You would be looking at your friend and he would be looking at you exchanging an unscrupulous grin...I felt that moment in the lab was just this... a reminicent of a precious moment in perhaps everyone's honest childhood.

Life would be too boring in lab if there aren't small (safe?) accidents. Accidents that freeze your breath, then bring a silly smile, and ultimately make your eyes roll left and right to make sure no one has seen you make that silly mistake. All these three responses mostly taking place with a span of a second! I am usually very careful in lab, so I hardly get the pleasure of such accidents, but Marc and such accidents seem to have become synonyms these days. The other day, he was churning something under the fume hood and staring at his flask throughout like a statute oriented to look at a fountain...or something. It made me wonder if he was even blinking. He looked so attentive as if his flask was going to abscond with his precious solution. Right then, the flask blew off, I saw him pull off his head with a jerk and I noticed he looked right and left, front on the broken flask, and then right and left, finally settling on front with a smile. I wonder why he didn't bother to look behind. I was standing behind him pretending to be busy with my own stuff. Inside, however, I was laughing. {I like to notice people behavior sometimes...we are silly sometimes, aren't we?)

He went off to the board where he had his data of four flask. He went to the last column, circled it with red marker, and wrote K.I.A with a sad face (smiley?) on the side like an improvised version of :(. He said to me, "look what happened." I said, "I saw..." trying to project an expression that would tell him I sympathize with what had happened to his beloved solution (actually it was the sad smiley he drew on the board that was helping me to provoke sympathy ladden expression on my face, otherwise, I was cracking up inside:D). I asked him, "What's K.I.A?" as I didnt see it anywhere else on his data. He looked at me with a sad face and I couldn't help but see the similarity in the picture he drew on the board of :( and his own expression when he said, "Killed In Action." ...Haha..right there and then, "the" geniune laugh shot right out of my heart, transformed into a smile, and was pushing me to let it out on my face but I was restraining it because I thought he was really said for the flask that was killed in action. But I felt my eyes really laughing, and when he smiled, I just couldn't stop but let full smile at the board, at the sad smiley, sympathetically :) at him, at myself for thinking he was seriously sad, bowed back to my lab book, nodded my head sideways, and fully smiled some more...

Afternote: I am not the only one who personifying everything and anything!