An Inexact Science

Eddie Fulmer wasn’t particularly good at things.

He was a nice guy, but tasks that would be simple to a lot of people were seemingly insurmountable to Eddie.

He couldn’t really fix things, or make things, or put things together. He had trouble reading directions, struggled to understand directions when someone read them to him, and seldom got it right even when someone showed him what to do.

All this, of course, frustrated his mother Babs to no end. After all, she thought, a 22-year-old man ought to be able to do simple things. No one was asking him to build a house, but ask him to fix whatever you call the flap thing in a toilet and invariably it would end with water all over the bathroom floor.

One day as he tried vainly to put together a two-shelf bookcase from Walmart that Babs wanted to hold her collection of erotic books (she’s read  “Fifty Shades of Gray” 26 times) she could only mutter, “Eddie, it isn’t rocket science.”

As a matter of fact, she said that a lot.

When Eddie attempted to paint the outside trim of the front door and ended up spilling paint all over the porch, she said, “Eddie, it isn’t rocket science.”

When he tried to replace the battery in the lawn mower and ended up shocking himself, she said, “Eddie, it isn’t rocket science.”

When he endeavored to put up the Christmas tree and he and the tree ended up crashing through the living room picture window, she shouted, “Eddie, it isn’t rocket science.” 

As you might imagine, Eddie was sick and tired of hearing “it isn’t rocket science.” So much so that one day he decided the best way to never hear that phrase again was to actually become a rocket scientist.

“If I was a rocket scientist,” he reasoned, “and I did whatever rocket scientists do, then they couldn’t tell me it isn’t rocket science because it would be rocket science.”

So Eddie Fulmer, who graduated from high school with a C-plus average bolstered by his strong showings in gym and home economics (for all his other failings, he made the best scrambled eggs in the class), set out to become a rocket scientist.

“Where do you think I should go to school to become a rocket scientist?,” he asked his friend, Lou Rossano.

“How about MIT,” Lou suggested. “I heard that’s a pretty good school.”

Needless to say, Eddie’s attempt to be admitted to the academically renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology ended up unsuccessful. 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

For Plan B he looked up schools for rocket scientists on Google, and he found the Kreswell Institute of Rocket Science, which happened to be located less than an hour’s drive away.

Eddie filled out the online application and in no time he received a letter saying he had been accepted into the school. For just $7,000 he could enter the eight-month program that promised to make him a “world famous rocket scientist” and set him up for jobs in “some of the biggest rocket scientist places in the country.”

The fee included not only his tuition, but an official rocket scientist white lab coat and an official rocket scientist clipboard to hold his important papers about rocket science.

It seemed like a good deal to Eddie, so he signed up.

Over the coming months, Eddie worked his way through the challenging (for him) curriculum, which included “Introduction to Rocket Science,” “Intermediate Rocket Science” and “Advanced Rocket Science.”

Unlike his high school days, Eddie enjoyed an active social life in his new school. He joined the bowling and badminton teams. He played the role of Oscar Madison in the school play “The Odd Couple.” He was chosen to be editor of the school newspaper and was even elected class vice president.

One of the highlights of his academic experience was when he and his classmates took a field trip to the Convention of Rocket Scientists in Springfield, Missouri. 

For fun, he and his school chums would drive around town and shout putdowns at people. For instance, if they saw a man digging a ditch they would yell out, “What’s the matter with you? It isn’t ditch digging.” If they saw a woman tending to her flower garden they would brazening yell, “Hey, it isn’t flower gardening.”

Eventually, they realized no one but themselves understood the meaning of their jokes, so they gave up. However, when one of their crowd, Tom Spudic, said, “well, it isn’t yelling out of your car at people,” his classmates promptly beat him senseless.

For their finals project the class had to build an actual working rocket. They launched it one night from the parking lot of the local Walmart. 

After a few minutes in the air it crashed through the roof of a nearby social club, pretty much ruining the wedding reception of Bill and Heidi Billingham and prompting the young couple to vow that they would forbid any of their children, either naturally born or adopted, from ever becoming rocket scientists.

It turned out that after eight months of study Eddie and his classmates were really pretty lousy rocket scientists. He learned that most of them were there for the same reason he was.

“I’m kind of a screw-up,” one of his classmates said as they watched smoke rising from the social hall. “I got sick of hearing ‘it isn’t rocket science’ whenever I fouled something up, so I decided to become a rocket scientist.”

So Eddie never became a rocket scientist, world famous or otherwise. But, Babs became more sensitive and quit using that term, which is really all he wanted.

And in the end he made a bunch of new friends, who he’ll be keeping in touch with because they elected him chairman for their first class reunion.