Son of Chemists

I'm the son of immigrants who owed their careers and propserity in America to being proficient (maybe even experts) at chemistry, as my mom was a PhD and my dad got a master's in chemistry. I should be very thankful for their skill in that area and the steady employment they maintained because they did jobs in a field that so many Americans find hard to understand: chemistry. Heck, I find it hard to understand, and I should theoretically have chemistry in my blood, in my genes. My parents always wondered why they raised a son who just didn't like chemistry (or physics, or engineering) and I never had a really good answer, but gained experience and studying for trivia has given me a plausible explanation: chemistry is boring to the normal American-raised kid who grows up on TV shows, cartoons, sports, everything that the culture throws at you. I don't know that other countries are different, but maybe Chinese state-sponsored TV suppressed a lot of "entertainment" and emphasized science and technology during my parent's generation much like they restrict their TikToks to learning channels and educational content. What I know is I have a much better mind for memorizing people, getting a basic understanding of stories, understanding who people are and their backgrounds and what they did, much more interesting topics to read and digest than your average chemistry textbook of redux reactions, balancing equilibrium, experiments, how different elements react with each other. People didn't watch Breaking Bad to see how Bromine and Barium (the 2 symbols in the title theme) would react, they tuned in to see how Walter White the chemistry teacher would change, how he would display human characteristics such as pride and greed and jealousy. It's also the "quick and easy facts"- I'm good at those, attaching a name to something or a number, or a date. Chemistry has no time periods (maybe a little bit of history), it's just brute science, at some point my parents probably had to just brute force learn chemistry through trial and error. I even like the period table of elements, one of the first things people associate with chemistry: I love how elements were named after those who discovered like Margarety Perey named her discovery after native country France, or Wolfram was renamed Tungsten, or all the elements after No. 92 (Transuranium elements) that were named after places and people (Americium, Einsteinium, Berkelium, Tennessine.....sound familiar?) But when you start talking about how each of those elements can lose an electron (or is it gain one) to become an isotope or develop hydrogen bonds/ covalent bonds with other subatmoic particles, I suddenly lose interest. It's not dynamic, no one's getting into a fight with another country, there's no compelling story like Hercules's 12 tasks or The Joad family crossing America to reach California. I picked up a book (from the Summer Reading Program!) recently called "100 ideas in 100 words" Chemistry: a whistle-stop tour of key concepts, the most basic nutshell guide of chemistry one can get...and got stuck somewhere around "the actinides," the plum pudding model, and allotropes. Ever go through a chemistry category on Jeopardy? It's hard to write those questions, and I don't envy the Jeopardy writer in charge of writing chemistry questions because a.) you have to have a firm grasp of chemistry to make sure what you're writing is right and doesn't have multiple answers, and b) you have to write it in a way to make readers care, make it interesting. Both are hard; there are no little tricks like "this author who wrote Tender is the Night".....there can only be one answers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, chemistry you actually have to define an allotrope is a different structural form of an element in the same physical state; you have to know the relationship between pressure and value in Boyle's law.....know that the polarity of bonds is based on differences in electronegativity. Hard to show a picture of a man like history or literature clues. I like chemistry now more than when I just throught it was a jumbled mess of concepts I couldn't wrap my head around, but...I still don't love it. I'm glad that my parents did though and am lucky to be in the position that I am today. Happy Father's day! Maybe Baby Girl Yan will get into chemistry at a young age...if the AI hasn't completely taken over that industry yet.