The plan was George Cooper's grand gesture. He'd saved overtime money, pulled strings for tickets, and announced the trip with uncharacteristic ceremony: a boys' journey to Cape Canaveral to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis launch.
"Thought it was about time we saw some real rockets," he'd said, gruffly nudging Sheldon's shoulder. The look on Sheldon's face—a flash of pure, unguarded astonishment—made the effort worth it for George. For Georgie, it was a weekend at the beach and a break from football.
The drive to Florida was a symphony of Cooper male dynamics: George's classic rock, Georgie's sullen silence, and Sheldon's running commentary on geological formations and the thermodynamic inefficiency of the family truck. George, for once, just let it wash over him.
They arrived under a sky the color of a bruise. The launch, scheduled for dawn, was scrubbed due to a storm system rolling in from the Atlantic. Standing at the viewing site with a crowd of disappointed tourists, Sheldon stared at the distant, obscured launchpad. His small frame was rigid. He didn't cry or complain. He simply shut down, the keen edge of his anticipation blunted by the immutable laws of meteorology.
"Well… shoot," George muttered, looking helplessly at his youngest son's closed-off face. Georgie kicked the gravel. "So we drove all this way for nothing?"
Back at the cheap motel, rain lashed the windows. Sheldon sat on his bed, methodically reading a NASA pamphlet for the tenth time. George watched him, feeling the familiar sting of failure. He'd tried to speak Sheldon's language, and the universe had thrown a wet blanket on it.
Then, a crash of thunder so loud it rattled the glasses in the bathroom. The lights flickered. In the flash of lightning that followed, George saw an idea—clumsy, but genuine.
"Jeepers," George said, putting on an exaggerated tone of ignorance. "Will you listen to that? Sheldon, you're the science fella. How does that work? The lightning and the… the noise. Is it the angels bowling?"
Sheldon looked up, his expression one of mild scientific horror. "Angels bowling is a patently absurd anthropomorphic myth. It's the rapid expansion of plasma superheated by an electrical discharge."
"Plasma? Like in TV?"
"No, not like in television. A state of matter." Sheldon sighed, a teacher faced with a profoundly dim student. But the urge to correct, to explain, was irresistible.
"The lightning bolt superheats the air around it to approximately 30,000 Kelvin, five times hotter than the surface of the sun. This causes instantaneous explosive expansion—a shockwave—which we perceive as thunder. The light travels faster than sound, hence the delay between the flash and the report."
George played his part, scratching his head. "So the flash is the lightning cookin' the air, and the bang is the air poppin' like corn?"
"A crude but not entirely inaccurate analogy," Sheldon conceded. He stood up, warming to his lecture.
"You can even calculate the distance. The speed of sound is approximately 1,125 feet per second. For every five-second delay, the strike is about one mile away."
Another flash. They counted together. "One Mississippi, two Mississippi…"
The thunder growled.
"Approximately two-point-one miles," Sheldon announced, a hint of triumph in his voice. He spent the next hour explaining atmospheric electrical charge separation, the structure of cumulonimbus clouds, and the invention of the lightning rod.
George listened, or feigned to, asking deliberately simple questions that allowed Sheldon to elaborate. He watched the disappointment over the launch melt away, replaced by the serene confidence of understanding. Sheldon wasn't just a boy who'd been denied a spectacle; he was a mind that could unravel the very spectacle of the storm that denied him. And George had given him that, by being dumb enough to ask.
---
Meanwhile, in Medford, the Cooper women were engaged in a different kind of atmospheric disturbance.
Connie had declared a "beauty parlor day" for Mary and Missy. In the perfumed haze of curling irons and hairspray, Missy, inspired by a magazine, pointed to a picture of a punk rock singer with electric blue streaks. "I want that!"
Mary, reflexively: "Absolutely not. You're nine."
Connie,lighting a cigarette beside the dryer chair: "Oh, let the kid live a little, Mary. It's just hair! It'll wash out."
"It's not about the hair, Mom! It's about the message!"
"The message is 'I'm nine and I like blue,'" Connie retorted.
"You were never any fun, but you don't have to suck the fun out of everything for her, too."
The air crackled. The stylist slowed her work.
"Fun?" Mary's voice dropped, low and dangerous.
"You think parenting is about fun? While you were out being fun, I was the one making sure there was dinner on the table and the bills got paid. I'm the one who has to face the pastor when my daughter shows up looking like a… a smurf!"
"Better a smurf with spirit than a mouse with a martyr complex," Connie shot back.
Missy, who'd only wanted a bit of color, shrank in the chair, watching the two most powerful forces in her life clash. It was about hair dye, but it was about everything: responsibility versus freedom, tradition versus rebellion, a lifetime of resentments simmering under a blue rinse.
They rode home in poisonous silence. It wasn't until that evening, after a tense dinner without the men, that Connie found Mary scrubbing a pot in the kitchen with ferocious energy.
"You know," Connie said, leaning in the doorway, her voice stripped of its earlier venom, "my mother never let me cut my hair. Said only fast girls had short hair. I cried for a week when she made me donate my braids."
Mary didn't turn around, but her scrubbing slowed.
"I'm not saying you're wrong," Connie continued. "Probably a school rule against it. But sometimes… I see you being the bad guy for all the right reasons, and it just looks so damn lonely. I was never strong enough to be the bad guy. I just left."
Mary put the pot down. Her shoulders slumped. "I just want to protect her."
"I know. But you can't protect her from being herself. That's the one storm you can't control." Connie walked over and poured them both a glass of sweet tea, a peace offering.
"How about this? Temporary color. Wash-out. Just for a weekend. Let her get it out of her system. You get to be the cool mom who allowed it, and I get to be the cool grandma who bought it. We both win."
A faint smile touched Mary's lips. "You're a bad influence."
"That's my job, daughter. That's my job."
---
In Florida, the storm had passed, leaving a washed-clean sky. The launch was rescheduled for after their departure. Standing by the car, George braced for fresh disappointment.
But Sheldon looked up at him, his blue eyes clear. "The probability of a successful launch on the initial attempt, given Florida's climate, was only 63%. The delay was statistically probable. However, the meteorological phenomena we observed were a compelling consolation. Thank you for inquiring about the lightning... And thank you for the trip. Our primary objective might have failed, but I enjoyed spending time with you."
"Any time, buddy," George said while smiling widely, ruffling his hair, his shoulders a tad wider and his eyes a tad shinier. Sheldon tolerated it. Just for that instance.
As they drove north, Georgie asleep in the back, Sheldon watched the receding coastline. He had not seen controlled fire defy gravity. But he had seen raw, chaotic power illuminate the sky, and he had, for a moment, helped his father understand it. It was, he calculated, a different kind of launch. A successful one.