For a girl, Alice was good at science and math. That’s what all her teachers said. But most teachers are morons, and the late 1950s and early 60s were unenlightened years, when pop culture was mired in post-war romance. The fact is, Alice was good at science and math for a boy, too.

She had a quick mind and a linear brain. She was enamored of causality. She loved a good theory. It surprised her family and her teachers when she selected English as her college major, marijuana as her personal medicine, and business as her career.

But none of those choices, except the pot, changed the way her brain worked, and the weed only altered it slightly and short-term. She had a tenacious memory, she loved to learn, and her best teacher was herself.

Herself didn’t teach Alice science and math. Some of that came from her father, some came from a few good men (teachers), and some came from books. Most of her reading was fiction (unless classical mythology can be called something else), but a few items of scientific knowledge captivated her, so she looked at them closely and committed them to memory.

To this day (and Alice is now nearly 60) she can describe DNA, RNA, and something of how proteins are constructed. But the miracle she loves most of all is photosynthesis. She could probably work up the exact formula on a napkin right now, but exactness doesn’t matter except to a plant. Alice knows that sunlight elevates adenosine di-phosphate into adenosine tri-phosphate, and she understands that when ATP steps back down to ADP it provides the energy to turn the carbon and oxygen and hydrogen and oxygen in CO₂ and H₂O into sugar and what we breathe.

Thanks to plants, she says. And although she knows what she’s discussing is chemistry, it seems better than alchemy to her. Who needs to turn lead into gold? How much more wonderful is it to turn exhalations plus water into food and air?

For friends, Alice and Karen make an odd pair. They’re both in the retirement plan recordkeeping business, and they heard of one another for years before actually meeting. By then they had so many historical anecdotes and consulting esoterica to share that they began to take walks, have meals, and even plan trips to continuing education conferences. But they’re different enough that their strong feelings may actually be dislike; each finds the other so irritating that they have let their relationship pulse on and off as if it were sexual.

One of Alice’s colleagues likens the friendship to a toothache; she says that Alice keeps coming back to it like a tongue returns to a bad molar. And when Alice doesn’t, Karen does. So after a hiatus of nearly 15 months, Alice and Karen met for lunch yesterday.

(continued tomorrow)