In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers explore their ever changing relationships with science over the course of their lives.
Part 1: All throughout his life, Chris Wade has a love-hate relationship with science, with very little love.
Chris Wade is a native Washingtonian and a retired police officer. He is married to his best friend and adores his children. Chris enjoys storytelling, laughter, traveling and good food. He is a Johns Hopkins University graduate and currently works in community outreach. One of his favorite quotes is, "Tell me the facts and I'll learn. Tell me the truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in heart forever."
Part 2: After Caroline Hu’s parents make her choose between art and science at age 17, she struggles with her choice.
Caroline Hu studied the evolution of animal behavior at Harvard University. She has lived in the Midwest, California, and China, but like the salmon, is now back in the Boston area where she was born. She also draws comics inspired by other living things–from pitcher plants to those toads that carry their eggs in their back. Her dream project is to create a graphic novel inspired by her scientific training. A copy of its first chapter, which she self-published, is in the Library of Congress.
Episode Transcript
Part 1
I never really cared much for science. In fact, for over 45 years we had this sort of love‑hate relationship, with very little love. And it all started back in elementary school science class. You see, I was raised Catholic and my parents were like all in. I was an altar boy, my brothers were altar boys, we went to Catholic school. I even dreamed of becoming a priest. My brothers thought that was taking it a tad bit too far.
But Sister Pat was my elementary school teacher and she taught religion and she taught science. And between Religion class and being an altar boy, my parents insisted on me, being this devout Catholic, the teachings about creation and Adam and Eve was embedded in my brain.
Then one day in Sister Pat's Science class, she talked about anatomy and reproduction, which prompted me to ask what I thought was one simple question. Did Adam and Eve have navels?
Sister Pat became visibly angry in like a nun kind of way, so I got sent to the principal's office. They called my parents. We didn't live far so my mom decided she would come up there.
And the whole time I'm sitting there like, “Okay, Sister Pat's the same one that told me that Adam was created from dust and Eve from a rib and she thought she was just going to slide this umbilical cord thing in there with nobody noticing it.”
Chris Wade shares his story at Smitty’s Bar in Washington, DC in November 2022. Photo by Lisa Helfert.
So my mom got there. She simply said, “Are you mad at the question or are you mad at the fact that you can't answer it?” My mom was cool as hell. Right?
Let's fast forward. Now, I'm in Catholic high school Biology class and things are going cool. One day, the teacher starts coming around the room handing out tools. She gave me a scalpel and some forceps and then she doubled back around with this bucket and she pulls out this dead piglet and sits it on the table in front of everybody. She proceeds to tell us that we're going to cut the skull open and expose the brain. And she stressed the importance of being really careful not to puncture the brain.
I'm thinking like, “Okay, puncturing this pig's brain is probably the least of his concerns right now.”
Now, I didn't say that, but I did have a question. “Excuse me, I'm planning on becoming a priest and I was just wondering if murdering and butchering these pigs and frogs and crawfish will have any impact on that decision?”
She became visibly angry and I found myself back in the principal's office again.
My mom didn't come up this time but she did call and she simply said, “Okay, people are starving in Africa and it sounds like you’re all up there playing with food.” I told you my mom was cool.
By senior year, this is an all‑boy high school, so by senior year I was introduced to this new cool thing called girls. I'm assuming that that anatomy and reproduction stuff that Sister Pat had been talking about had finally caught on. It's about the same time I learned that priests couldn't get married so I decided that it was time to pursue a new career path.
Chris Wade shares his story at Smitty’s Bar in Washington, DC in November 2022. Photo by Lisa Helfert.
So without consulting anyone, I decided I like working with kids, I'll become a pediatrician. So I went off to college and I had been doing well so far so I didn't get an advisor. That's how I found myself in a Zoology class being taught by the dean of science.
I remember the first day of class. He was like, “If you miss two of my classes, you need to drop this course.”
So I made a point of not ever making eye contact with him in class. And it was a large class. He had the seating chart and everything.
Then one day, he calls me by name and asked me to come up front. So I'm walking up there and he asked me, when I got to the front, he said, “Can you draw a paramecium on the board?”
Now, in Zoology lab that had just been one of our homework assignments I turned in. That's when I said, “Oh, he was so impressed by my paramecium that he wanted me to come up there and you know show these other C‑students how this is supposed to be done.”
So I draw this paramecium and I draw it and I had these like squiggly lines and dots and all this stuff. I'm not trying to brag but it was impressive. I just imagine him never erasing it and getting other classes to come over and like check it out.
So while pointing at the paramecium, he turned, he asked me. He said, “What is it you want to be? What career path did you want?”
I said, “I want to be a pediatrician.”
And while pointing at my paramecium, he polled the class. “A show of hands, how many of you all would send your kids to him if he was a pediatrician?”
So I found myself once again deciding to pursue another career path. And that's how I became a police officer.
That was cool. All that science stuff was behind me. I did go back to school. I got my degree. I graduated from Hopkins. Even now, when I wear the shirt, people like, “Are you a doctor?”
Yeah. All right, Hopkins.
So I wear this shirt and they're like, “Are you a doctor?”
I'm like, “Hey, you know…”
Chris Wade shares his story at Smitty’s Bar in Washington, DC in November 2022. Photo by Lisa Helfert.
Apparently, my paramecium wasn't, you know. But anyway, all that was behind me and life is good. I'm moving on and then the pandemic happened. They closed schools and my kids ended up taking virtual classes. By default, I found myself being the fifth‑grade science teacher.
And my son hates science. I don't know where he gets that from. But he's inquisitive, like me. He's likely to ask like, “Why are rocks hard?” You know, those type of questions. And I didn't want to be Sister Pat or that pig murderer high school teacher or that mean‑ass college professor, so I was forced to let go of my resentment that I had been harboring against science for probably way too long. And in doing so, I came to the realization that science is amazing. I'm serious. Like it's never ending. You can you can always learn. It's like on and on and on.
And like am I smarter than a fifth grader? Yeah, in science. Like did you know that Pangaea was the supercontinent for Wegener's Theory of Plate Tectonics? It's crazy, right?
And so, as a result, my son took a liking to it. It's actually one of his favorite subjects. He's doing extremely well in science.
Then they went back to school so I'm like, “Oh, man.” So now, when he comes home I'm like, “You got any science homework?” And we'll go through the book.
Just the other day, it was so funny. He came in and he was like, “Hey, Dad,” he came in and he's like, “you know what a creepmeter is?”
I'm like, “What?”
“A creepmeter.”
I'm like, “Ah, that's usually like a woman's best friend that tells her this guy…”
He's like, “No. It's a device. It's a device they use to measure motion across or something.”
I was like, “Oh, what?” So now I'm learning about creepmeters and volcanoes and lava and all that cool stuff.
They say it's never too late. So you may go to your doctor's office one day and don't be surprised if you see Dr. Wade standing there. Not me, my son.
Thank you.
Part 2
When I was 17, my parents presented me with a choice. Either I could pursue science and have their support or I could choose art and I would lose it.
Now, my parents, they worshiped at the altar of American higher education. My dad was a mechanical engineer, a nerd through and through. My mom actually did sing and dance when she was younger but her decision to become a systems control engineer was 100% pragmatic.
Somehow, they had me and there's photographic evidence of me drawing even before I had hair. As I was growing up as a kid, no printer paper drawer was safe because I drew on everything. I was drawing planets and animals and dinosaurs.
Caroline Hu shares her story at Turtle Swamp Brewery in Boston, MA in November 2022. Photo by Kate Flock.
My mom tried to show me the wonderful world of engineering by bringing me to take‑your‑daughter‑to‑work days and they would give us like little switches and buttons as swag to really try to convince us to become engineers. And at the end of every one of these days, we'd all have to gather for the big group photo. Then they would go down the line and ask each one of us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
One year, I said scientist. One year, I said artist. And third year, I said, “I don't know,” and the talking to I got on the car ride back home was the worst that year and that was the last year she brought me.
Now, 17 years old, I was both the president of the art club and the science club at school, clearly had not made a choice, but I had to then and I chose science. Nothing as practical as engineering, though. I became an evolutionary biologist.
Caroline Hu shares her story at Turtle Swamp Brewery in Boston, MA in November 2022. Photo by Kate Flock.
Now, a decade later, I'm walking on the beach trying to catch mice. I'm doing field work. And I get a text from my dad. From those of you in the know, he was in China at the time, so it's actually a WeChat from my dad and it said, “Doctors have found a growth on your mom's pancreas. She has four to five months to live and we're coming to live with you in Somerville so that she can get treatment at Mass General. We'll be there in four days.”
I mourned. I packed up my field equipment and, in four days, four of us were in my very typically‑sized Somerville apartment. It was my parents, the two engineers, myself the biologist, and my brother who happened to also live in the area who is a data scientist. We're all problem solvers to a fault, but we realized that the problem we had to solve together was not cancer. That wasn't going to happen. It was how to spend this time together that we still had.
As the biologist, for once, my knowledge was actually kind of valued by my family but, unfortunately, I was just the source of nos. “No, not that supplement. No, not that diet. No, not that predatory clinic.”
So, just normal, horrible chemo it was.
The temperature was falling. My mom was going to chemo and, one evening, she comes back and she takes off her hat. There it is, in her hat, it's her hair. Very emotional, she sat down and, to our amazement, started to compose a poem called A Single Strand of Hair.
After that, she would continue to write. She started to write about her growing up in China, coming to the United States and trying to start a family and a career here. And I started to draw. I drew a comic about a mother and daughter. It was very creative. A mother and daughter in sort of a Sci-Fi world making medical decisions and, ultimately, having a slightly happier ending of getting the precision medicine that I was reading about but wasn't actually available to my mother.
This comic came out in a local anthology, so I had a physical copy, and I did not tell my parents about it. It was in the apartment and this is how I remember it. My brother showed it to my dad. And I just remember him saying, my dad saying, “Ping,” which is my mom's name, “look, it's you.”
Caroline Hu shares her story at Turtle Swamp Brewery in Boston, MA in November 2022. Photo by Kate Flock.
And I got as far away as I could within a Somerville apartment, which is about 30 feet. I was all of a sudden I was like, “Oh, I gotta do the laundry.”
My mom, she came and found me. I had not wanted to tell her because a final rejection would have just vaporized me, you know? But, instead, she found me. She's seen the comic and she hugged me and she told me that she loved me.
She would continue to write and we actually started to band together as a family to help make her writing become a memoir. So my dad became her editor, my data scientist brother became her archivist and, myself, with a little bit of illustrator skills, I helped design a book jacket and a cover.
That dream of hers did come true. She lived 17 months post her diagnosis. Now, a published author in China. We were so lucky to have all that extra time with her.
Now, five years has passed since then and I'm wrapping up in the lab. I've also wrapped up two comic conventions. Now that I'm all grown up, I can revisit that dreaded question. I am a scientist. I am an artist. And I don't know exactly what's going to be on my business card next year. I know ‘Cartoonist’ will be on it and I'm excited.
Thank you.