Lab Girl

by Hope Jahren

display indifferently. In the parking lot I instructed the students to use the bathroom now, as we had a long drive ahead of us, and in my head I fantasized about the day after my promotion, when I would commission a T-shirt for myself that read I AM NOT YOUR MOM and begin wearing it to work.

I used to speculate endlessly about Boo—his probable reactions to each seminar, his expertise, his personal fortune—and then contrive tactics by which we could expose him, violate his privacy, and discover everything that I wanted to know.

I chastised him. “Shut up, dwarf. You just be grateful that your job is such a goddamn fairy tale. Not everyone can get away with biting the snow-white hand that feeds them the way that you do.”

Any sign that the newbie regarded his or her time as of any value whatsoever was a bad omen, and the loss of so many hours’ work was a telling trial of this principle. As

Seriously... Wtf

I answered, “Then the colors are wrong. Babe, I gotta go botch my own science; no time to ruin yours.” I added helplessly, “The Monkey Jungle never sleeps.”

Oh yeah, I don't have time to look at a map of my husband. Why include this detail?

Every moral and rational fact argued that we should not have stolen the drill. Except for one: whoever owned it was not there.

I’m good at science because I’m not good at listening.