Almost Famous

I was in the seventh grade when I almost became famous...for all the wrong reasons that is. My seventh grade teacher asked us to build something scientific (whatever the hell this means). 90% of my classmates made volcanoes out of clay or something that looked like clay. I remember someone also making a device that was like a remote control with a small light bulb at the end. It had something to do with the Morse Code. Big deal right!
I wanted to do something different and I knew who could help me. My next door neighbor’s dad was in the military and taught him how to built a lot of crazy stuff. Let’s call my neighbor Billy to protect his identity. He was a year older than me. A tall kinda dorky kid. He was smart, or at least he sounded smart most of the time. I thought he was cool because he never let his mom inside his room and she stayed out. I could never have pulled that off.
Billy’s dad had taught him how to make a bomb! That thing was loud,very loud, like a cherry bomb, way louder than a fire cracker. He put a few ingredients in a small cylinder. Like the kind they use at the pharmacy to dispense medications. It had gun powder and other stuff I can’t remember. Anyways...I had seen Billy explode a few and I remember being amazed by it. Ben.... ooops, there goes anonimity.. used a toy rocket launcher to make the thing explode.
So guess what my science project was....I swear I asked the teacher before I decided to bring it to class. For some reason he thought it was safe and said that I could blow up the thing in class.(he didn’t actually say blow up)
The day the project was due I woke up earlier than usual.I Knocked on Ben’s door and went up to his room. He had my project ready and explained to me step by step what I was supposed to do in order to make it work. I remember him saying “please don’t tell anyone who made this”...”Ok” I said, I never did...until now, almost 20 years later. He gave me an index card for my oral presentation. On it he wrote the ingredients and explained the procedure for making it and for exploding it.
Only 2 of my classmates knew about it. They really didn’t understand what I was up to so they didn’t ask much.
The day the project was do I was first on the list to present. Thanks to my last name staring with a B, this was common.
The teacher told the students in the nicest and most CLUELESS voice ever that Rafael had made a “pretend bomb”. He gathered everyone around a large table. I placed my bomb in the center of the table. The classroom was full so there had to be from 20 to 25 students. I introduced myself “Good Morning, my name is Rafael and for my project I made a bomb”...a few students laughed while some of the cool kids were wondering what the hell was this weird puerto rican kid talking about.
As soon as I began to read the ingredients the teacher said. “Are you serious Rafael?...let me see that card”. It took him about a minute before he started yelling at me...”are you trying to kill us?...are you crazy?...everybody stand up and go to the back of the room”. He was sweating and visibly angry. I remember thinking he was gonna hit me. I know he wanted to. He stared at me for about 3 minutes and said..”Do you have problems?” I said “No, I don’t think so”, i was so mad at him for not letting me finish my presentation.
He took me outside of the classroom and told me to get rid of the bomb and that I would get an F on my project. Can you believe this? The dude thought I had brought something really dangerous to class and...just gave it back to me? The bell rang and I packed my bomb back in my bag and headed to French class. I wasn’t sent to the principals office and no one called my parents to tell them what I had done. No one, not even my classmates mentioned the bomb to me during the rest of the day.
When I got home I went to Ben’s house and told him what went on at school. He said “hey... too bad you got an F...do you wanna blow it up now? This is the part that makes me pray and thank the Lord everyday...
That thing was the loudest, messiest, smelliest bomb Ben had ever made. We blew the thing up on top of a piece of wood and I was scared to death when I saw the piece of wood burned black. I mean it looked like it had been burned in someone’s fireplace. There was so much smoke after that thing exploded that I could only think about what COULD HAVE BEEN if I had continued my presentation.

If this had happened today, with the internet and social media sites I would have been all over the news. I would have been called a terrorist or something and CNN would have come to my school and made a big deal about it. Maybe even an interview with Larry King. I said maybe.