I try to live an upstanding life, that is, to not lie, cheat or steal. I have always told my family especially my children to live a moral and ethical life. Naturally I’m not perfect. There have been a times where I’ve done less than upstanding things. Once when I was in college I had a general chemistry test which required me to memorize the periodic table of elements. For some reason, now lost in the past, I felt this was ridiculous. I felt that I could just look it up in a book. So I carefully inscribed the table on the six sides of a yellow number 3 pencil and brought it in to the test.
Now you might ask yourself why now after all these years I’m writing about this in a blog. Well there was a
recent RadioLab by WNYC which included a segment about the periodic table. It reminded me of my adolescent transgression, and so I thought I’d write a post about it. By the way, I thoroughly enjoy this podcast and recommend it. This post might also give you a better understanding of me and my foibles. Oh, and I’m sorry for doing this, but I’d probably do it again. Note: As a teacher I have always made my tests open book because of this. Such a simple thing has changed my life in I’m sure other unknown ways. It was about 40 years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it.