![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Lab Journal Entry #4
"Illumination"
Int., lab, well-lit but dark outside. TORI is seated, trying to keep poised. Rumble of thunder makes her jump.
TORI
(Composing herself) I was working late tonight, and then this storm started up. (Pause) It’s irrational, but I have a bit of a phobia when it comes to thunderstorms.
It’s not too hard for me to guess why, even without any psychiatric background. It has to do with an incident in my childhood – well. Maybe I need to go back further.
I was what you might call a late bloomer, academically speaking. Mostly because I didn’t start receiving a consistent education until I was nearly eleven. My family traveled constantly during my early years. Not that I hold any resentment for that. Quite the contrary. The education of traveling far and wide, seeing the world, was just as valuable as any education I received in the classroom.
My father was an extremely talented businessman. He was able to retire before age forty. That’s when he met my mother. When they got married, they started participating in non-profits, donating time and money to worthy causes in countries all across the globe. Essentially, they made a career out of doing good. And when I was born, they took me along for the ride.
(Smiles) I was born in Switzerland, near Geneva. Gorgeous country. The mountains, the lakes...some of my earliest and happiest memories are of just lying on the ground, staring up into the clouds, breathing in the fresh scent of the grass. I probably have a hundred similar memories of the Mediterranean seashore...the cliffs of Dover...the coral reefs off the coast of Australia...I think I’d been to every continent at least twice by my ninth birthday.
School happened whenever my parents felt like teaching me. I learned to read – voraciously – and write, and do arithmetic and algebra. History and current events were their favorite topics, and I learned about more than a few cultures by firsthand observation. Science was a different matter.
A louder rumble of thunder. TORI flinches.
TORI
I read books indiscriminately, unaware of the difference between fact and fiction. Unaware that even what used to be considered fact was often disproven later on. I absorbed it all. I’ve always had an excellent memory. I just couldn’t tell the difference between what was worth remembering and what wasn’t.
When my dad reached his fifties, he decided he’d had enough traveling. He and my mom also agreed that it was time I started getting a more consistent education. So we headed back to the States and settled in my mother’s hometown. And I started attending school. Fifth grade. It took some adjusting, but I made friends pretty easily. That was where I met Eli, actually – we’ve known each other since elementary school. And most of the subjects were easy as well. My only stumbling block was science.
It was just ignorance. Given the right curriculum, I had every chance of excelling. But first I had a lot of misconceptions that needed to be corrected. (Covers face) One morning, just a week after I’d started school, the teacher asked us what matter was composed of. I shot up my hand and said, “Well, of course the four elements are earth, water, wind and fire.”
(Shakes head) I’d missed the previous week’s lecture about elements and the periodic table. Mrs. Kremp just smiled and gently corrected me, but I could tell everyone thought I was an idiot. For a while after that, I hated science because I thought I was bad at it. I kind of buried myself in math. Numbers were safe; they didn’t keep changing whenever the leading scientists decided to come up with something new.
Thunder
TORI
(Perks up again) But it couldn’t last. I’d always had a passion for exploring the mechanisms of the natural world. Even when all I had was a bunch of old books of my parents, written by ancient philosophers who believed bloodletting was a sound medical practice. Once I had the right resources, there was no holding me back. It turned out I was actually quite good at it. Which brings me back to the thunderstorm.
When I was very little I was scared of thunder and lightning, just like any small child, but my parents used to calm me down by telling stories about giants playing games up in the sky. Then I learned about electricity and cumulonimbus cloud formations, and – for once – having a proper understanding of something didn’t make me feel better. Electricity was terrifying. Deadly. A power outside of human control. Oh, we’ve found ways to harness it on a small scale, but it’s kind of playing with fire, isn’t it? It’s never really safe. It’s never harmless.
The first night we had a thunderstorm after that, I lay there in bed imagining a lightning flash striking me. It was so vivid, I could envision the blinding light, feel the intense heat. It didn’t matter than I knew the chances of it actually happening were very low. I couldn’t reason myself out of being terrified. All these years have passed, and the fear won’t go away.
Flash, immediately followed by thundercrack
TORI
(Cringing) Yes, I’m a thirty-year-old woman, and I’m still terrified of thunder.
no subject
no subject