A few months after my thirteenth birthday I realized that my chemistry set didn’t have all the chemicals I needed to satisfy my curiosity about what happened to various objects—coins, paperclips, flies—when they were submerged in different acids. The boiled-down battery acid I typically used for my favorite projects was no longer enough for me, so I convinced my mother to buy me nitric acid, and a whole new series of experiments ensued. When I read that hydrofluoric acid dissolved glass, it was a must-have, and Mom was dispatched, days before Christmas, to procure it. Because hydrofluoric acid is so deadly that the fumes alone can cause blindness, I had to bicycle down to the army surplus store (in those days army surplus really was army surplus) to buy a gas mask. On Saturday afternoons, Mom would regularly peek her head into the garage to tell me my peanut butter and jelly sandwich was ready, only to see me leaning over some boiling concoction, my voice garbled by the gas mask.