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  • What Might Life Be Like in the 21st Century?
  • Paul Lisicky (bio)

My mother probably didn’t expect him to have black hair and blue, blue eyes. Parent-teacher night: no other reason she’d have talked to Mr. Science, who would have looked past her to the other mothers, even if I’d built an atom smasher behind the school. The topic of discussion was my science fair project, “What Might Life Be Like in the 21st Century.” I’d waited until the night before to throw it all together, as I’d done with every homework assignment that year, out of some protest I couldn’t put a name to. What was the point of saying the here-and-now was good for us? My protest must have shown up in everything I did, from my matted hair, refusal to speak a word in class, to my walking off the field whenever I saw a fly ball coming in my direction. I was ready to go to sleep, though I hadn’t even started my day. So no surprise Mr. Science led my mother to the corner of the cafeteria, sat her down away from the other mothers, and told her in a slow, deep voice that he saw no future for the likes of me.

I think of how it must have felt to take in those words. Did it hurt to hear them? Did they excite her? Or did she relax into the hot scratchy wool of her skirt as a patient might take to the gravest diagnosis? No wonder my perfected city didn’t look like the other projects on the table. No wonder she couldn’t take in the sleek shiny houses I’d drawn without wanting to head for the door. And in that moment, when it was still possible to turn back, she might have wanted to touch Mr. Science’s face. Instead, he turned his head and saved her from that apology. She looked out toward the other mothers moving around the cafeteria tables, tried to picture herself among them, happy and glistening, and listened to what she could of his words.

“Science fair projects,” he said, with an easy, cruel smile curving his mouth, “are about proving what’s already known and [End Page 11] finding the evidence to support those claims. I have to be honest with you. That’s not what I’m seeing in your son’s project.”

“And his grade?” she said, with hope, as if she hadn’t even heard the half of it.

“Well,” he said, and held up two hands, letting them hang in the air. “If I gave him an F, maybe it’ll teach him a thing or two.”

“Thank you,” she said and stood up. She gathered her scarf and gloves. And drove home, calming herself by counting the trees along the way, as if she’d finally found the key to help me live.

What could I say to her delivery, her looking around the living room—chair to table to desk to chair—as if its dimensions had become more spacious in her absence? She sat down across from me, face shining, eyes deadly cool, in the hopes I’d finally get it. I couldn’t tell her I didn’t care about proof and evidence. I couldn’t say that the world didn’t want us in it because who among us even had the words to make those claims? That world? That world was a funhouse, full of mirrors reflecting nothing but my tossed-off homework, my drowsing shoulders, the thick, drab poison of me, me, me, me, me. I wanted to be more than that sad little nothing. I wanted to roll in the grass with the animals. The future? So what if it ended up letting us down? I was ready to get there. I was ready to rattle its gates, even if I couldn’t see past the houses, parks, and boulevards I’d drawn on that smudged sheet of posterboard.

The future arrived: that much I was sure of. And though it didn’t have the fires and punishments that transfigured their...

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