I got home from work one night and tried to find my little brother to ask him if he needed a ride to school the next day. He wasn't in the kitchen. Nor the Living Room, nor anywhere else in the house I looked all over, until I got to my room. I noticed a green glow from under the door and realized my brother was not only home, but in my room.



I opened the door. He was not playing Nintendo, or watching TV. He was staring at my lava lamp. He was always fascinated with it. He started at it a lot. I guess I did, too, but I wouldn't go in someone else's room just to look at one. I yelled at him and he left. I sat and looked at it too, I really loved this lamp. I would have just given it to my brother though, but my dad had given it to me and I didn't want to risk hurting his feelings. I decided maybe I'd buy him one for Christmas or something.

I gave him a ride to school the next day, and on the way he mentioned his Science Fair was coming up and he didn't know what make for an experiment.

I instantly had a flashback to my sixth grade Science Fair experience: I made a volcano. So did at least half of the rest of my grade. The fair started up, and every time someone stopped at your booth, you got a sticker and at the end of the fair everyone tallies up their stickers and the students who had the top three most visitors would get special recognition and a prize. Of course, when there are so many volcanoes, the visitors aren't exactly rushing in. Needless to say, I wasn't one of the top three.

Because of my lack of recognition and embarrassment, I wanted to not only help my brother learn from my mistakes, but I guess I also wanted to live vicariously through him. I started trying to think of cool, interesting, unique science experiments and thought of one: make a lava lamp! I had just read about it online a couple weeks ago. I thought it sounded cool, but since I already had one it didn't seem as cool.

It was the perfect idea, though: he wanted a lava lamp for years, everyone loves lava lamps, and then I wouldn't have to feel guilty for having one. When he got home that night, I told him about it and he was really excited at the prospect of having his own lava lamp. In retrospect, I think he was far more excited to get a lava lamp than having a cool science fair project.

We got the supplies and it turned out pretty good. There isn't a day I don't see a blue glow under his door. Our family jokes about it and almost every year he gets a new lava lamp (he now has a lava lamp collection). He's pretty happy: he won 2nd at the Science Fair, and has many lava lamps.