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Higgs Boson

James Bates

    Amy and I were graduate students at the university working with an elite group of scientists studying the smallest particle in the universe, the Higgs-Boson. Our project was to specifically look into how bosons were emitted at high speeds while traveling through the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, a process that involved using Feynman Diagrams. It was a dream come true for me and I was having the time of my life. Amy was working on the same project and we were both enthusiastic students. Maybe it was a shared love of all things subatomic but something clicked between us.
    “Would you like to go for coffee sometime?” I asked, after we’d been working together for about a month. I hadn’t really ever dated much, being as committed to my scientific studies as I was, but, like I said, there was something about Amy that drew me to her.
    She looked up from her computer, took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes and smiled, “Sure.”
    “Great. How’s tomorrow sound? Say, after class?”
    “Wonderful,” she said and turned back to her work.
    Well, that was easy.
    For the six weeks I was the happiest guy in the world. Not only did I have my scientific research to work on (I mean what’s not to love about analyzing data involving z-boson trajectories and the Higgs field), but I was also seeing the beautiful Amy, who, with her short cropped auburn hair, blue eyes sparkling behind tortoise shell glasses and a figure that could only be described as otherworldly, had me spinning like a photon through an electromagnetic field. I was in seventh heaven.
    But then...then Arnold Finkelstein entered the picture. Arnold with his wavy hair, perpetual three day growth beard and hipster glasses. Arnold, the English major who wrote poetry and just happened to be friends with Amy’s brother. Arnold, who apparently was everything I wasn’t. I never knew she was attracted to him until it was too late.
    I’ll never forget that day. The two of us were walking through campus from the lab to the cafeteria to get some coffee when Amy stopped, put her hand on my arm and turned to me.
    “Terry, I’ve got something to tell you.”

Oh, oh. I’d seen this before on television. Her tone of voice and her demeanor were not good, and here I was thinking that we were two peas in the same pod so to speak, two electrons in the same orbit. “What’ up?” I managed to cough out.
    “I’m seeing someone new,” she said, with a dreamy look in her eyes I’d never seen before. “His name is Arnie,” she fondly referred to him. Trust me when I tell you that I quit paying attention after she told me that he read his poetry to her and had taken her to the ocean to watch the sunset. How weird is that? She even told me that she was going to help him plant a garden. I pictured the two of them digging in the dirt, laughing and growing tomatoes or something. Man, what a complete waste of time.
    So, she broke it off with me that afternoon. Of course, initially I was sad but after giving it some thought for a day or so all I could think was, Good riddance. You see, when it’s all said and done, I like my sub-atomic world. It’s safe. Predictable. Me working in a garden and growing vegetables? Or going for a walk along a beach and getting attacked by seagulls? I don’t think so. Not when there’s a world of bosons, and quarks and mesons out there to investigate. All I need is a laboratory and a computer and some data and I’m all set. Sit on a hill top and watch the sunset? Sorry, but I think I’ll pass.

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