The Guy…of Science!

Posted: September 11, 2009

I haven’t gotten a chance to mention this yet, (see last post) but I got to see Bill Nye in person a couple months ago. Bill was giving a talk at nearby St. Louis University on environmental sustainability that was free and open to the public. Given such a bargain-basement price, of course we went and got there plenty early.

The coolest part about all this is that I wasn’t the only one who was excited about this (nor probably the most excited). My 7 year old stepson Johnny just about imploded with excitement when he found out.

Johnny’s a huge Bill Nye fan. He watches the Bill Nye videos and reads Bill’s books from the local library like a lot of kids his age play video games (he really likes video games, too). So Isa and I decided that it would be a good surprise to take him to this talk…of Science!

We didn’t tell him we were going. That day we left my parents after visiting for the day, and instead of driving straight home, we drove to SLU. When we parked, Johnny asked why we were stopping.

‘We just feel like getting out and walking around for a minute.’

He didn’t question at all, but just got out and walked with us, even though it was pretty cold.

Finally, we passed by a sign as we were getting close to the assembly hall with a big picture of his Science-ness on it.

“We’re going to get to see Bill Nye?” Johnny all but vibrated through the floor.

So we continued in to the convention room to hear Bill speak about environmental sustainability to a bunch of college students.  We figured it would be cool for Johnny to get to see Bill Nye in person, but that he probably wouldn’t get much out of it considering the target crowd.

“I’m going to remember this everyday for all my life,” Johnny proclaimed.

The next day we were visiting my parents, and Johnny was telling them all about how we were part of the ‘Space Generation’ and how the sky on Mars is beige in color.

Sounds like we’ve got another little ‘Science Guy’ developing already.