That's Funny

Isaac Asimov once quipped, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but, ‘That’s funny…’”

One example, is how the Scottish biologist, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin.  He was working in his laboratory investigating staphylococci.  After hours, a cleaner came in and opened the windows.  In the morning, Fleming came in the lab and found a strange fungus on a culture he had left in a petri dish.  That’s funny—the fungus killed off the bacteria, in the culture.  And penicillin was identified and medicine has never been the same since.

Even funnier was John Pemberton who wanted to cure his headache.  He was a pharmacist by profession.  He used two main ingredients: coca leaves and cola nuts.  When his assistant accidentally mixed the two with carbonated water, the world’s first Coke Cola was the result.  What’s not funny is the fact that John Pemberton died two years later and never saw his mixture give birth to a soft drink empire.

It’s funny how people like to mix things up.  English chemist, John Walker, in 1827, mixed antimony sulphide and potassium chlorate.  This resulted in a sticky mixture that coated his mixing stick.  When he tried to scrape the sticky substance off his stick, it burst into flames.  That was a shock!  He had just invented the world’s first match.  It’s funny that they were marketed as John Walker’s Friction Lights.

Sometimes it’s funny how words came to be. The French term “nompere” meant “one without equal.”  But the sounds blurred together to sound like “noumpere.”  Eventually English would pronounce “noumpere” as “an oumpire.”  Forming the word we now know as “an umpire.”

One last funny that’s really silly.  During the war years in the 1940’s, General Electric engineers were trying to find a cheap alternative for rubber, specifically for tank treads, boots, etc.  When the engineers combined silicone oil and boric acid the result was a silly, stretchy, rubbery, bouncy ball.  The engineers had a lot of fun playing with Silly Putty.

All that’s just to say that I had a funny Eureka moment a few days ago.  It being a hot day in August, we had gone to the beach.  I was cleaning out the car. It was hot!  I wanted to make one trip from the car to the house, so I was carrying an armload consisting of a cooler, beach umbrella, beach towels, a blanket and my purse. Holding not too securely in my hand, were my car keys.  I was trying not to drop them because I needed my key to unlock the door.  I had just managed a few steps away from the car, when I heard the car engine start.

That’s funny.  The car was locked.  I was holding the keys.

Eureka!  I have an automatic starter.

The car is a 2016 model that I bought used in 2018.  I had tried to read the car manual but not being fluent in car technologese I thought  automatic start wasn’t included. Now four years later, I discovered that I do.  I just hope it works on a cold day in January and not just a hot day in August. 

*This story is my answer to Steve who challenged the Senior Scribblers to write a story using "a hot day in August."