What Did You Do at Work Today?

When I tell people about my occupation (research and development in airbags), more than one smart aleck has sarcastically asked, “Do you ever get to ride in the cars they crash?” I don’t have a witty comeback. (I’m open to suggestions though.) Usually I launch into some trivia about crash test dummies. (The infant dummy’s name is CRABI.)

Yesterday I was reminded of how fun my job can be. I was walking into a building I don’t usually have much reason to be in but I did in fact have a project to work on. I walked into the shop area and this guy from my group (who I don’t directly work with) calls me over and asks if I want to go for a ride. Intrigued, I walked over to him and his apparatus. It seems that my company had acquired a carnival ride. Or maybe it was just a trendy car modified into a 6.5mph crash simulator. So I got into the car with my coworker and we “crashed” twice. The first time we wore regular seatbelts and in the second, we wore seatbelts that eliminated the slack during the crash. Very very cool.

When I was a freshman in high school, I took about 8 months of violin lessons. (At that point, I had already taken 7 years of piano lessons.) I was not very good at the violin but I sure enjoyed it. One of my favorite hobbies later on was to turn on some popular music and try to play along. Sooooo fun. I would entertain myself for hours, until my fingers hurt. I knew I sounded bad but it made me happy. Yesterday, I was driving home after work and one of the DJs on this afternoon talk show was trying to play a saxophone along with popular music. I had a goofy grin on my face the whole way home. It was just so funny! And I guess it reminded me of happier times.