another memoryIn high school, our robotics team toiled late nights in the basement. We spent hours working, and if we didn’t like what we’d built, we’d take the machine apart and do it over again. Mom would freak out. “What are you doing?” she’d exclaim. “Don’t do that! Now you have nothing! What you had was fine.” Dad would laugh. “Let them be,” he’d say. Mom would make us clean up every month or two because we’d scatter parts and scrap metal across the ground. When we had to cut zip ties as part of our robot’s sweeper assembly, we littered the floor with sharp bits of plastic like shavings of coal. At some point that night, I leaned back, palm against the tile, and drove a shard of black zip tie into my wrist.
There was no pain at first but lots of blood. The tiny wound ached as I rais
