I'm claiming idiot savant
When I was around nine, science introduced me to the mechanics of smell. Specifically, the idea that smelling requires particles of the thing traveling into your nose*. After thinking about this for a while, I started to wonder: If I spent a lot of time sniffing at something, would I be using up enough particles to make the thing smaller?

In case you're wondering, NO**. But it will make you dizzy.

Other brilliant moments:
- Experimenting with the physics of suction with the lid on one of the tins of spices. Long story short, I covered the cat with curry powder.
- Taping my thumbs to my hand to understand why opposable thumbs were so great. It's kinda hard to tape up the second hand, since there's the whole "no opposable thumb" thing going on already.
- Yeah, I did the "blind" thing too. I had a time-out for misbehavior, during which I decided to keep my eyes closed through the day. My sister was less than thrilled when I came back to the dinner table and, uh, missed and ate her roll.


* Just humor me and pretend I know what I'm talking about.

** For the love of god, don't get all anal-retentive over this. Any effect my smelling had on the object was negligible, okay? I don't care if the thing was ten molecules smaller.
(Exempt OH WOW, VICODIN, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 1:57, Reply)