LUANNE MCNULTY
Indignities of Being a Round Bottom Flask
I was born in the fires of Mt. something or other. At over eight-hundred degrees Celsius, I had no shape, no conscious thought other than, “Am I in hell?” Every bit of my molten silica glowed red. At some point, I was scooped out of the glowing molten liquid and blown into a spherical shape.
I am not a copycat of the ball glass Christmas ornament. Yes, they were invented first, and they’re visually appealing, with their brightly colored, shiny, sparkly, and fragile glass, but an ornament is nothing more than a silly object that’s just there to look pretty. I barely resemble an ornament; my glass is thick, sturdy, transparent, colorless, and utilitarian.
I don’t know why I have a neck. It’s ugly, and it ruins the perfection of my round body. All the elegance of a perfect sphere wasted because a tube was shoved onto it. And, though I’m really not jealous, it’s not a petite neck like that flimsy ornament.
Do you think the neck makes me a unicorn? They’re magical, right? If so, I might be okay with that. Then again, my neck is a translucent abomination. Though smooth and shiny on the outside, it’s been ground to a filmy surface on the inside. You can’t imagine my humiliation, let alone how much it hurt.
People always talk about my bottom, which is rounded and smooth, but I’m not an object to be ogled.
A *#&! chemist who’s always wearing a dirty white coat has forced me to be a tool. I call her Nemesis. I hate her as much as I hate that I can’t move on my own.
As her tool, I’m compelled to serve as vessel, protector of chemical reactions, and champion of science. I don’t mind being a protector, and champion of science sounds great, especially if it means I get some autonomy. But vessel? Is that code for something evil?
Perhaps you think that it’s an honor that I’m the vessel for concentration and removal of undesired solvents and gasses, but I don’t. Nemesis attaches me to a torture device that she calls a rotary evaporator; it spins me round and round until I get so dizzy that I want to puke, then it keeps going. When it finally stops, I’m attached to a high vacuum that wrenches gasses out of me until I want to crumple like a paper bag. My purpose on this planet is not to be subjected to her sadistic behavior.
I can’t stand up on my own because one, I have a round bottom, and two, my neck is too heavy and drags me onto my side. The only way I can stand upright is if I’m set into a cork ring, and some of those things are foul and dirty. Who knows where they’ve been?
There’s nothing dignified about my neck, especially since Nemesis grabs me by it and takes me wherever she wants. Sometimes she attaches a clamp to my neck that squeezes so tightly it’s uncomfortable, then attaches me to a stand so everyone gets to see my disgrace. If I were a sphere, I could just roll away.
Also, as a hollow sphere, I could keep myself secure and pristine on the inside. But no. My neck is always open, and Nemesis has no restraint, so my body is treated like a damn hotel. Things come in and things go out. Nothing ever stays. Am I unlovable?
No, absolutely not. Water loves my glassy surfaces and wraps around me like a security blanket, so Nemesis thinks I’m too wet for her super sensitive highly classified work. She burns the water off me with a Bunsen burner and doesn’t care that I scream as the water evaporates off me.
And why is my neck called a female joint?
Almost every time Nemesis picks me up, she drops a plastic stir bar down my neck, and when it hits bottom, it hurts. Then, that bar spins at the lowest part of me, barely skimming my glass wall, and it tickles. I’m at its mercy. Plus, sometimes the stir bar gets wildly out of control and throws itself into my walls like it’s having some kind of tantrum. There are moments when I want to fracture into tiny pieces, just to prove a point.
Did I forget to mention that she regularly sticks plugs down my neck? How do I breathe when Nemesis adds things through my neck that smell, never mind the things that burn, itch, freeze, or scratch my walls. If the things in my belly start to bubble wildly, I cheer. If the plug shoots out of me and gunk is spewed all over the place, it’s cause for celebration. She curses at the damn volcano while I laugh.
Sometimes, I get put in the bottom of the dirty dishpan for hours or days and have to smell all the crap from every other dirty lab tool. When Nemesis finally bothers to clean me, she puts me on the drying rack, where I sometimes hang upside down for hours. Eventually, she puts me in a dark drawer, which feels like kindness, but it’s only because she needs more space on the rack.
Occasionally she ignores me, and I’m stuck on my side in the drawer, held captive with all the other round bottom flasks for days. Every time Nemesis opens or shuts the drawer, my body sways wildly, and I get motion sickness.
I’m tired of being her lackey, but I’ll never tell. I can’t. I’m not afraid to admit that I hope she fails, and that all her experiments are ill-conceived and ill-timed. And nightly, when Nemesis goes home dejected after realizing that her experiments didn’t work, I cackle evilly and think that it served her right.
