Nothing quite like the invention of Carbon 500

Editor’s note: This column originally ran in the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen in 2003.

The statute of limitations has long since run out, so I guess it’s safe for me to tell about a little misdemeanor committed by number one son, T.J., when he was in high school in the 1980s.

That’s my “grabber” – the sentence that’s supposed to pique your interest so you can’t possibly resist reading the rest of my story!

In reality, T.J. never committed a crime, but if Wayland chemistry guru Elias Khreish has been missing one of the little black balls he uses to represent carbon atoms, I can explain it.

Let me back up a little bit. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column about pick-up baseball games we played when I was kid. One of the games I described was called “500” — I couldn’t remember what it was called, but lots of people reminded me.

After that column appeared, two of our sons, T.J. and Mike, told me about a similar game they and their friends played between classes when they were at Wayland — only there was a twist. That’s where this story begins.

Remember what I said about “500”? You got points for catching a fly ball, a one-hopper, a grounder. When you reached 500 points, you could become the batter.

So, OK, now we come to T.J.’s “crime.” T.J. was taking chemistry from Wayland’s “forever” chemistry maven, Elias Khreish, and they were studying molecules — using little colored marble-sized balls to represent atoms of various elements, for example, white for oxygen, black for carbon, whatever. So, one black and two whites would be carbon dioxide, get it?

After class one day, T.J. inadvertantly walked off with a little black carbon “atom.” As he was walking across campus from Discovery Hall, the science building, to Linfield Hall, the main academic building in those days, he saw a bunch of his townie friends — Scott Schwefel, Lane Seaholm, Tim Kirsh, Don Kiesling, and brother Mike — on the steps of the chapel.

He called out “Catch!” and fired the carbon atom high in the air — and, thus, “Carbon 500” became a game that lasted for a couple of years at Wayland.

Picture it: a bunch of guys in coats and ties chasing an almost invisible little black ball, yelling and laughing like a bunch of idiots. Those are the kinds of silly things that make for lasting memories, I suppose.

Number two son Mike also recalled neighborhood wiffle ball games with T.J. and Don Kiesling in Don’s backyard or ours. Don even kept statistics — ERAs, RBIs, batting averages — that sort of thing. Today’s “fantasy baseball” and “fantasy football” crazes had nothing on those kids’ games. Hurray for imagination.