The Sorta Great Wall

Here's why I'm increasingly down on science: I've heard over and over that most of what we think of as "matter," which laypeople call "stuff," is actually made up of empty space.


Well, that's a lot of, as my dad used to say, "bull-lar."

I don't know what "bull-lar" was, but my dad said that a lot of things were "bull-lar." He'd say what we did, as kids, was "bull-lar." He'd be yelling at us for something, and say something parental, old-school parental, like "You think you can just take a car and race it along and jump it 100 feet off the road? Well you can't! That's a lot of bull-lar!" (It was not 100 feet, though. It was 110, at least.)

Between the frequent use of the phrase "bull-lar" and my dad's habit of holding my younger sister, who was only about two, while he yelled at us, very little 'punishment' actually soaked in because we spent half the time wondering what "bull-lar" was and half the time watching our sister mimic dad as he yelled.

I suppose "bull-lar" was one of those things that parents learn to say when their kids are young because they don't want to swear around their kids and are trying to be good role models. I try to do that, too, which was why a while back when I slipped while installing the stove hood and banged my head hard enough to draw blood, I didn't swear or cuss or yell. I didn't do anything for about 10 minutes except try not to explode, and I did it. I didn't swear at all. I just bled. So I'm a good role model, except that while I try not to swear and I never drink, I also regularly let the Babies! watch, on Youtube while they eat breakfast, a clip of Butters from "South Park" singing What What In The Butt, which I think is hilarious and the Babies think is hilarious, too, and it really helps us get through breakfast a lot easier.

I know, I know. I can hear you now: How can you possibly do that? How can you, of all people, possibly expose your not-even-two-year-old boys to copyright infringement? I feel bad about, it, too. But listen to my side: A family is an economic partnership. Everyone has to pitch in. So some people make sure that the Babies! get fed and some people make sure the Babies! get bathed and some people make sure that the Babies! don't fall out of windows. Those people, in our family, are Sweetie. Other people (me) have them watch South Park clips on Youtube and determine what occupations they will have in the future to make sure they make enough money that Other People (me) don't have to work after they're fifty. (Currently, Plan A is them having a Disney show, since if you are a kid and you appear on Disney TV you are instantly worth a billion dollars, and also, I like "Bunnytown.")

Plus, consider this: if someone in the family is going to take a fall for the rest of us, shouldn't it be the infants? Let's face it; someone has to pirate the South Park clips and illegally download music and make fun of Tom Cruise. If, when the hammer comes down, the Babies! take the fall, then they will receive shorter jail terms and lighter sentences because, well, they're cute. Cuteness is still a defense to most criminal charges, isn't it? I should probably know that.

But I don't know that. I don't know a lot of things because all my memory is taken up with everything "science" has filled my head with, like hokey stories about how everything is mostly empty space, how we are all made of "atoms" and that these are very small and are made up of mostly smaller things like "electrons" and "quarks" and "my paycheck" and that as a result of all this small-osity, things that we think of as solid matter, things that seem good and thick to us -- the table, the old shed, Kris Kristofferson-- are in fact mostly empty space.

Well, I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it because nothing is mostly empty space.

I'm not mostly empty space. I've tried, unsuccessfully, fitting into some of my more favorite t-shirts lately, and I've tried going jogging, and I can assure you that I am far from being made up of mostly empty space. Empty space would have a far far easier time lugging it's empty-space-belly up the hill at the end of empty space's running route, and empty space would not fill up a t-shirt quite so snugly. My own scientific analysis has led me to conclude, at this point, that I am mostly made up of Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch, which also is not mostly empty space.

Another thing that is not at all empty space was our old shed, which is finally down, and which somehow warped time and space in that the shed, torn down, managed to contain more actual material than it had when it was still standing. I can remember when it was standing, and it was four walls and a roof and some old household furniture inside. I would go inside, sort of. I would actually stand just outside the shed and look in, to see if there was a place to put more junk, in between the older junk and the raccoons, and the shed was full of lots of seemingly empty space, because it wasn't full of stuff and according to "science," things that aren't full of stuff are mostly empty space. I wish "science" had been here to help with the work. But, as usual, "science" never shows up until the work's done and the pizza's being served, when "science" tries to prove that it knows something after all by having your pizza remain superhot for longer than it should so that you burn your mouth even though you waited a really, really long time before eating the pizza.

Tearing down the shed was like battling the hydra; every board we tore out created three more. Every wall that came down left two more. It just kept multiplying and multiplying and we just kept hauling it to the second of two dumpsters using our specialized shed-tearing-down-tools of "old winter gloves" and "a garbage can with wheels."


Using that highly technical equipment, we threw away the entire shed which, when torn down created a pile of rubble that took up two dumpsters. Two. When they redid our roof last year, they only used one. So there was more stuff in that shed than there was in our entire roof on our house.

Of course, the roof of our house did not contain, as I found out the shed did, five live raccoons and one very very dead raccoon. At least I hope it didn't, because if there is that much wildlife in our roof, I'm moving.

There is nothing quite like pulling up an old board and seeing most of a raccoon skull sitting there in front of you, not quite attached to most of a raccoon skeleton. The only thing I could think was where's the rest of it? Is it on me? I still kind of feel that way. That's my most common reaction to nature, as I sit here and think of it: Is it on me? I'm not the outdoorsy type. Put me outdoors for any length of time, and I'll begin to think that the outdoors is on me, and not shake that feeling or the way it makes my skin crawl, until I get back inside, take a shower, and watch Newhart on DVD.

But it's done! The shed is down, and where there used to be a sagging, possibly haunted shed there now stands what looks like empty space but isn't. What it is, is a bare dirt area covered with leaves and bits of grass and the smaller debris that I decided to leave there. Trust me, it's an improvement, even if technically part of that dirt area is still made up of shed parts.

There's still shed parts there because I took The Boy's advice, something I only am ready to do when I've been working in the hot sun all day and am covered with raccoon flakes. We were hauling and hauling and I was trying not to think of what the pieces of animal would do to my lungs and, and we got down to the last two items of stuff to haul: the world's largest collection of cement cinder blocks, and a pile of stuff that included shingles but was, in my imagination, made up mostly of dead animal skin, animal skin that was getting on me.


We looked at that, me and The Boy and The Boy's Friend, who I'll call "Q," and The Boy said the smartest thing he's ever said. He said "Let's just let erosion do its thing." Who says kids don't learn anything these days?

I brushed some raccoon parts off my head and decided we'd do just that. We spread the pile back out and hoped for erosion to work more quickly than most so-called "science."

That left the cement bricks, which as it turned out made up a lot of what appeared to be the empty space under the shed. (They may also make up a lot of the empty space in me, if the doctor's scale is to be believed.) There were more cement bricks under that shed than I could have imagined. If cement bricks were money, we'd be rich. But they're not, so we're just tired.

We decided to not haul the cement bricks, and instead to turn them into The Sorta Great Wall. I began stacking them into a line of bricks along the lot line between our house and Q's house next door. I got permission to do this by asking Q "Do you think your parents would want us to stack those bricks there?" He shrugged and said he'd ask them, and then I began stacking them there before he could do that, because people can only tell you "no" if you give them a chance.

The Sorta Great Wall now extends about fifteen feet along the lot line, and about two feet tall, and will hopefully one day be very scenic. Until then, I'm hoping that Robert Frost was a little wrong. "Good fences," Robert Frost probably said, "make good neighbors." I'm hoping that "Crummy fences made up of things you are too lazy to haul to the dumpster" make good neighbors, too. Or least make neighbors not call the zoning committee on you.


That's what I've spent the first three days of my vacation doing: Tearing apart the last of the shed, beginning construction of The Great Wall, and pondering just why science is never right. Because I know now: matter is not made up of 'empty space.' It's made up of cement blocks and raccoon skins, and it's on me.