Of children's books and triplet states

Mom: I'm jealous that [Nina's family] has so many grandchildren. We have none.

I did not say, "I'm jealous that their mother doesn't say shitty things to them all the time."

Mom: I did a great job picking your father. Only he would put up with you.

At some point between those statements, she got another political rant in. The whole time, I bounced a salt-and-pepper shaker stand to which I tied a rubber band.

Mom: We read to you all the time when you were little. Don't think it's of your own devices that you're so smart. It's thanks to us.
A.: Do you know how smart I am? I work on things for which I struggle to understand the underlying technologies. This has sort of bothered me; because it's there, I want to understand it. I don't feel inferior for not understanding; I just wish I understood.

Just bouncing this salt shaker thing off this rubber band reminds me that I never got the mathematics behind springs. And that bothers me. Except, as I'm bouncing this now, I realize that part of me doesn't give a $hit. No puppies will ever be harmed because I don't understand how springs work.

***
You know what else? When I was last backstage, I started wondering about glow strips: why do they glow, and why does flashing a light on them, refresh them? So I looked up phosphorescence, and thought about closing the page as soon as I came across the phrase, "quantum mechanics," because that $hit just makes my head hurts, but I thought, 'no, I want to see how much of this I can understand.' Or at least how much I can read without wanting to slam my head against the wall. Which turned out to be the term, "triplet state." That was the sign that it was time to close the page. I accept my intellectual limitations, and they are way short of triplet states.

[For those of you who care: here's another interesting but not-understood-by-me reference to multiplets.]