I am a disciple of antigravity and nothing can keep me down. I rise above all the problems of Earth: the wars, the pestilence, the bad Chinese food. Above the screaming children wanting more allowance and less homework. Above the TV blaring news of earthquakes, murders, and great sale prices on new cars.
Ever since Newton discovered the mysterious force that brought an apple down upon his noggin, giving him a welt that ached for several days, mankind has looked for an antidote to the mysterious force of gravity. Considered by physicists to be one of the four great forces of nature, along with the strong and weak nuclear forces (think fission and fusion), and inertia (think Newton before he discovered gravity, or your teenage son when you ask him to take out the garbage), gravity has always perplexed and amazed scientists.
Why does something that’s big have more gravity and something that’s small have less? Does this mean that fat people are more attracted to each other than skinny people? If that’s true, then why don’t fat people get more dates? Or is this why they’re fat in the first place – because the bigger you are the more food is attracted to you? Gravity creates an endless series of questions that need exploration and require additional research grants, lab assistants, equipment, and full-professorships to explore more fully. Gravity has been creating jobs in science for over 300 years and there seems to be no end in sight.
The holy grail for all gravity researchers is its antidote: antigravity. Antigravity research started small. Initially, it was just Newton’s son, Andy, sitting under the same tree as his father had, with an apple balanced on his head, waiting to see if it might not fly back up into the branches and reattach itself. Andy Newton was a teenager at the time, and incredibly patient, and this was years before the invention of Nintendo or Xbox, so he had quite a bit of time on his hands. Unfortunately, before he could discover antigravity, he was spotted by William Tell, who had an apple-on-top-of-a-young-boy’s-head fetish, and when he saw the apple perched on Andy’s head, he couldn’t help wanting to split it open with an arrow. Although the shot was fortunately accurate, young Mr. Newton quickly abandoned his research and was never spotted beneath an apple tree again.
To date, true antigravity devices have only been discovered in science fiction films, where antigravity beams are used to blast aliens back into outer space where they belong, or to impress women at the brilliant scientist/main character’s college reunion who would never date him when he was a freshman lab-rat cage cleaner.
But getting back to my own antigravity bent, it is just part of my contrary nature. I am reflexively anti-everything. Like Groucho Marx, I don’t want to belong to any club that would have someone like me as a member. Growing up, I was anti-war and anti-aircraft. My favorite word was antidisestablishmentarianism. I am anti-depressant; I mean, who isn’t, unless you enjoy being depressed. So I guess that leaves the French.
I am anti-aging: Can we just stop time for a little while, before all my hair is gone? I strive to be anti-climactic: Have you ever heard of tantric yoga? I was anti-fashion before it was anti-fashionable. Because of ongoing hay fever problems, I am antihistamine. I am also strongly antinuclear and heatedly antiperspirant. Some people think I’m antisocial, but really I just have some antitrust issues.
My essential antigravity nature continues to define me. It makes me lighter, gives me ground clearance, and helps me keep a nice, safe distance from all large, looming objects that threaten to bump into me. It certainly helps me keep off the pounds, and although sometimes I get a bit lightheaded, mostly I feel ethereally well placed.
Ultimately, what good is all this gravity? Sure, it keeps you from floating off into outer space never to be heard from again, but there’s more to life than being permanently tied down to a bunch of possessions. Without gravity, I can float free and see the world from a different perspective. And it’s not like I can’t make attachments when I want to. My attachments just have to be a bit more intense than other people’s, because mine need to be emotional, magnetic, or of the strong nuclear variety, the kind that can only be broken apart by an atom smasher. As a side benefit, when my attachments are broken apart, there’s enough energy created to power a city the size of Pittsburgh for several months.
I am the original Antigravity Ray, and when I beam my smile at you, look out, because you may find yourself lifting off for an adventure you never imagined you’d have. The bottom line is: I am living proof that if young Mr. Newton had waited long enough, that apple would have floated right back up into the tree.
