When I was around five or six years old, my parents gave me the privilege of transforming a corner of the garage into a laboratory.  My eyes widened with delight.  Though some might have viewed it “realistically” as a mere dark, dank, cobweb-ridden cranny good for little but storage, I gazed upon my new hideout with excitement and wonder.  As a young boy intensely intrigued with science and invention, I fantasized about all the possibilities for discovery and creativity within that space. 

I decked it out with all sorts of tools and scientific paraphernalia, taking on the role of inventor and researcher as best I knew.  I positioned a broad, flat-white desk with lots of drawers in the center.  In the upper right corner of the desk, I placed a bright fluorescent lamp.  To top off the simple setup, I donned a child’s lab coat, pushing up the clean white sleeves with pride.  These simple items kicked off my expedition, but I quickly added more items to the lab as I saw opportunities for new projects.  Residents of the desk included a vintage television set, a terrarium for carnivorous plants, multi-colored balloons, a clock conducting electricity through a pear, a microscope, a telescope, fossils, Roman coins, excavation tools, notebooks, and a revolving door of library books.  Some projects were completed, like when my dad and I fabricated a mobile-style model of the solar system (where I learned the proportional sizes of the planets), and others were left incomplete, like the robotic companion I hoped to construct. 

What really establishes the laboratory’s significance in my memory is not my accomplishments there.  I was in elementary school; nothing I did could be considered “groundbreaking” by the scientific community.  What made it special to me was the personal development.  It didn’t really matter how seemingly insignificant the discovery; I was exploring the world around me, and I relished every moment.