Centrifuge Incident

The device pictured is a hand-cranked centrifuge from a Gilbert chemistry set that I had mounted on racks on the wall over my desk. One raises and lowers the handle at the top to cause the test-tube holders to spin, in the manner of a mechanical top. It is the star of today's anecdote.
From the time I was 8 or 9 years old until we moved into town where we could get cable (circa 1987), the only television in the house was the one in my room, a big old color model that was primarily used as a monitor for the Atari and Commodore 64, as our reception was lousy. If something of interst to others came on, they'd come into my room to watch.
One night, when my cousin Susie was visiting us, there was something coming on that she and my parents wanted to watch but I didn't (possibly Saturday Night Live), so I bade them good night, crawled into bed and headed off to Slumberland as they watched their show nearby.
The next morning, when I got up and headed out into the living room to get breakfast, I found everyone staring quizzically at me as I entered, and Susie was having trouble maintaining a straight face. After a moment, they explained.
I had been asleep for something less than an hour when, without warning, my eyes snapped open and I sat up straight, announcing "I have just the thing! I have just the thing!" I then hopped out of bed, ran across the room to my desk, and snatched up the centrifuge. I pumped the handle several times, watching it spin, and, to the startled onlookers, announced "I'm not a weirdo...everyone's doing it!" Then, I quietly went back to bed and went to sleep. I can't recall if I took the centrifuge with me.
While I've done plenty of talking in my sleep this is the only incident of somnambulism on my resume that I'm aware of.

Ben and Me

Like our subject of April 15th, this was part of a book report, this time of a more well-known book (also a Disney short), though one that I remember nothing about that one couldn't deduce from looking at the video box. It's interesting that I selected a scene that doesn't include the mouse narrator---I wonder if I perhaps didn't actually read the book, but just drew Franklin's experiment, which I already knew about?

Optically-Illusory Frog

This seems to have been referenced from a book I had exhibiting this classic optical illusion as a drawing of three frogs, each of whose mouths was one of the designs, except that I apparently just thought it looked cool and drew one of the frogs, embellishing it a bit.

Injury Map

I wish I had a clearer memory of what this was all about. It seems to have something to do with some sort of Fantastic Voyage scenario, but it also seems to depict some sort of giant with roads (note the center lines) and buildings inside it (or, alternately, a city in the outline of a human figure). Whichever way you interpret it, it appears that vehicles pass in and out of it through a tunnel in the butt.
Incidentally, this is the front and back of one sheet of paper.

Shapes of Things

Here we find me putting a friendly face on the cold, scientific discipline of geometry. Special attention should be paid to the conjoined twins, who are set apart from the group, and seemingly not all that happy about it. This is four or five years before I would first read Very Special People, but the concerns of "freaks" were even then important to me. Also, note another instance in my work of the "two hats" motif. An alternate interpretation: these are single-celled organisms, and the unhappy one is simply reacting to the stress of mitosis. Unlikely, though, because I drew enough amoebas to know that they'd have cilia, not legs

The Descent of Man

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome. I have convened this symposium to present my new timeline for Man's evolution. I originally prepared these diagrams some 31 years ago, but after one presentation at Margaret Morrison Elementary Institute, it was apparent that the scientific community at that time was unprepared to accept my conclusions. I shall commence with Figure 1:

This depicts the well-known progression from "anthropomorphic tadpole" to "gill-man" to "Chaka" to "Dennis the Menace as an adult". Where I break from current orthodoxy is my radically compressed timeline. Proto-man (homo tadpolus) debuted, not in the distant past, but in the year 0 A.D. This necessitates a complete rethinking of history as we know it (as well as the suggestion that the Nativity may have looked much different than my depiction of it). In a remarkably swift transformation, just one year later, h.tadpolus has evolved into a bipedal, lagoon-dwelling amphibian with a fondness for brunettes. Three-quarters of a century later, he left the water for land, abandoning his scales and gills in favor of a protective coat of fur, and embarked upon a course to dominance over the dinosaurs and sleestaks that were his competitors for the harsh new world of dry land. 1,901 years later, he had assumed the form of homo sapiens, and his only natural predators were teachers, pesky girls, and, of course, Mr. Wilson. And now, let us proceed to Figure 2:

Unsatisfied with merely upending the current understanding of history, I then opted to present my view of Mankind's future. The future holds much more gradual changes for us, but environmental changes will by the year 5099 A.D. create a race of genial, shark-headed hominids with a passion for jogging on what unsubmerged landmasses remain. Eventually, by the year 200,000, man will begin in earnest to return to the seas that spawned him so long ago, regrowing his fins and scales. And finally, in the year 3 Million A.D., Man will have achieved his ultimate mutation, with enlarged eyes for utilizing what little light our worn-out sun may produce, thick scales to block cosmic rays that pass freely through the long-depleted ozone layer, a fish-tail in addition to legs (just to show up those snooty mermaids), and large, sharp claws, because, even in that far-distant time, claws will look cool and be easy to draw. At this point, the sun blows up.

I welcome the scientific community's comment.