Losing Science

As a kid, I figured my family could have formed a country. Dad was a college administrator, Mom a paralegal, my sister a teacher. One brother was career military, another was on his way to becoming a doctor, another planned to be a priest.

“And what do you want to be?” people would ask me.

“A researcher,” I’d answer, and they’d screw up their faces: “Why, that’s not even a word!”

Researchist, I wondered?

Forced, finally (and privately), to the family dictionary, I was crushed to find them right. Nothing existed between “research” and “re-seat.”