Saturday, September 9, 2017

Deadstocked book report: The atoms family

One of the many things I sold while running my online business was books. My selling lead me to go out to rummage sales, thrift stores and pretty much anywhere else I could think of to get cheap merchandise and turn a profit.

It was at a church rummage sale in my town that I stumbled upon a memory. A memory that dated all the way back to 3rd grade. Because of our closeness to a power plant, a worker from the plant came out to talk about nuclear power and to hand out a book to each student in the class. This is a report about said book.
Bababadum
{Geiger counter clicks twice}
Bababadum
{Geiger counter clicks twice again}
Bababadum Bababadum Bababadum
{Geiger counter now clicks fast and starts beeping}
They're clicky and their nukey,
They'll turn your body ooky
Who's bright idea was this bookie?
The atoms family!
So, yeah. This is what we were handed and along with the help of our teacher, we were supposed to learn how nuclear power works. 
Being an 8 year old, there were only two things I knew about nuclear power.
1)Homer simpson works at a power plant and 2) Something called a meltdown, thanks to hours of watching my mom play simcity.

When it came time to ask questions to the friendly technician, I asked one question. "Could there ever be a meltdown?"

This question caught the nice guy off guard. I'm sure a classroom full of kids would ask dumb questions like "Do you like your job?" or "Does it pay well?" But to be asked such a serious question by a damn kid must have disheartened him. 
Not wanting to cause a panic, he shrugged and said :"Anything could happen, but there's a lot of smart people working at the plant to prevent that kind of thing from happening.
(I would like to note at the time, my dad was working at the power plant and I can easily compare him to Homer Simpson, if that means anything regarding the technician's answer.)

Anyways, to the book...
Way back in the 3rd grade, I did all the activities and read all the stuff because I was deep down, a good student.
The book I found was actually in pretty rough shape. The back few pages were a little tattered and someone had really gone to town on a few of the pages with marker.  There were a few pages that survived that I've taken a second look at as a sullen smart-ass adult.

Judging from the mother atom picture and the two "baby" atoms, this could also be used 
for some obscure sex-ed class for asexual reproduction.

Context is everything, kids...
Another fun page I looked at as an adult and figured I could leave this page blank and uncolored with creative thinking. The obvious answers of what shouldn't be colored is the cake, the cat, the apple, the fish and santa... But here's my reasoning behind leaving them all uncolored:
Apple: Much like the vending machines in springfield's power plant, I'm sure healthy and tasty apples have a home at the plant for hungry workers to eat.

Cake: What? Workers at the plant can't celebrate birthdays or retirements with cake? What's this world coming to???

Santa: I don't want to work at a place that doesn't allow the open celebration of holidays... Christian or otherwise. (Now that I think about it, if I was a worker at a plant and saw Santa any time of the year other than at Christmas, I'd be calling security...)
Fish: (Insert blinky the 3 eyed fish joke) (Also, I'll come back to this one.)
Cat: To help keep those pesky radrats under control.

Why are there stairs for the fish?
As I look at this now as an adult with a degree in biology, I can state 2 things, 1)fish are pretty stupid and 2) water has a tendency to flood. With enough water in the system, those fish would go straight to the damn core... I know, I know, Real plants have filtration systems and grates and stuff to keep things from getting into or out of the plant...
The more I look at this, the more I get the idea that the guy that created mirelurks from fallout had this book at one point in his life and just kept staring at this thinking "Wouldn't it be cool if fish got into the power plant and mutated into monsters?"
Thoughts as a kid:I can draw better than that!
Thoughts as an adult: Are they already mutated from the sun's radiation?
This is another picture that kinda bothered me both as a kid and as an adult. As a kid, I just was bothered as to how poorly drawn it was. As an adult I wondered why they weren't drawn to look more human.
I mean, in less than 10 minutes I can draw 2 faces (With my non-dominant hand) that look more realistic. Here, look:

Well, enough of that. Hope you enjoyed this. Maybe I'll get around to doing more...