February 2004

Hailyn Nielsen • Of Nobel Prize Winners and Glowing Raccoons

7,233. That’s how many days I figured out I’ve been alive. I was worried that I’d missed the 10,000th day of my life, but it turns out I’ve got more than seven years to wait. 7,233 days doesn’t seem exceptionally aged on paper; I feel much older.

A biology honors seminar last year got me thinking about all this. The professor had recommended Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry, Kary B. Mullis. Later, the professor apologized for including the book on the syllabus and recommended that we try to sell it back. Mullis has some wild but entertaining ideas about traveling on the astral plane and being abducted by glowing, talking raccoons, as well as the controversial opinion that AIDS is not caused by HIV.

Of course, I kept the book and read it in my first free moments. That’s where I found his advice that people should celebrate every 10,000 days of their lives. (I wonder if there’s a market for “Happy 10,000 Days Old” greeting cards?) Had Mullis and his revolutionary genetic technique of polymerase chain reaction not laid the path for such amazing practices as DNA fingerprinting and the Human Genome Research Project, I would call him crazy. Somehow, I don’t think a second-year UI undergrad is qualified to categorize Nobel Laureates as crazy. “Eccentric” works better.

It seems many brilliant people possess some element of eccentricity, and I’m determined to adopt one of my own. James Watson, one of the discoverers of DNA, doesn’t tie his shoes. Perhaps it wastes too much time. It takes me a leisurely 40 seconds to double-knot my favorite pair of running shoes. Assuming I’ve tied my shoes an average of once a day since my fifth birthday, I’ve spent about two-and-a-half of the 7,233 days of my life tying my shoes. I think that qualifies as a wise investment of my time. On the other hand, I don’t believe that intelligent, fluorescing mammals have kidnapped me, so I’ll have to continue to search for my very own oddity.

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