Breadboard — made of plastic foam and metal. A clean empty slate with a fixed number of holes. You can plug things in as you wish and construct a circuit. When you are finished, you can pluck all of them away and reuse the breadboard for another test.
The first time I saw one of these was when I was 8-9 years old, in a small dingy room my father had rented above the motorcycle repair shop. Next year they all moved into a rented house with a kitchen and a bedroom. Now the kitchen was filled with breadboards, solders, wires, LEDs, capacitors, DC motors, 12 V batteries and lots and lots of dust. A year later they were all packed up in boxes in the attic at my mother’s place. The electronics had led us to debt and dysfunction. Father closed it and moved out of the state.
When I came to the US for grad school, I soldered a bunch of wires in the lab as part of the experiment I was working on. My coworkers were so surprised that I could do it. Nobody was surprised by anyone else doing it. Just with me. I never got to touch breadboards here since.
During high school I spent most days indoors toying around with all the leftover junk in the attic. I made a working breadboard circuit with blinking LED lights. I removed the circuit and fixed them on a wooden flute so that different lights lit up whenever a hole was closed while playing the flute. I wrote a song for teacher’s day, composed it and taught it to a bunch of young kids in my brother’s class.
I played my fancy flute with LEDs alongside. The performance happened outdoors on a sunny afternoon. No LED lights were visible to the audience amidst the bright sunlight. No one had no clue what I was doing with these weird wires hanging all over the flute. I cried afterwards. I never explained what I did with the electronics. Next moment, the flute was as clean as a fresh breadboard.
My mother always saw me as her breadboard. She could decorate me as she wished and made me walk and talk her way with a leash—my power cord. She took pride with what she had done, now I was a beautiful girl on the outside and a breadboard on the inside. The circuits—carefully architectured by her and her alone.
Alas, I was not an empty breadboard on the inside. I had feelings and consciousness about my circuits, unlike a breadboard. My mother’s circuits went against mine, causing sparks and burns. Fumes, short-circuits, pain, agony, suffocation.
When I came to Chicago, finally far enough from her power cords, I tried to ease the pain and agony. Realigning some wires, making small changes until my lights were bright and colorful and my breadboard finally breathing and recovering from the burns and fumes.
During our calls she started noticing my changes. When it was time to finally power on all the lights to my relief, I stopped. I felt I needed to explain—that she was owed a proper explanation for getting rid of her carefully crafted circuits.
I flew back to our(her) home so she could see the proof that my lights were finally getting brighter and she could be happy for me that I was getting happier for once. But what is happiness for a breadboard? That does not make sense.
She tried her best to revert the changes. Burns, fumes, short circuits repeating this time and hurting more than ever. I ran away, flew back to Chicago much earlier than planned, and never called her again. She really missed her beautiful breadboard.
Even with the lights shining, the loss of power cord was extremely painful for me too. I missed her more than ever. Meanwhile, she burned all her money on getting a US visa and tickets to Chicago. Nothing mattered more than fixing her breadboard, which she believed was led astray in the foreign land.
She arrived. I did not fight. She was fully focused on fixing all the circuits that she thought I had ruined. I could no longer explain any more.
My lights started going off until one morning I woke up in the ER, my hands tied to the bed and 3 cops looking down at me. I didn’t tell her what happened because I still do not remember. She told my roommate to please keep me in check and not let me ruin her circuits again, and left. I stopped going to the lab. Said I needed a break.
I have been getting by as my burns, fumes and short circuits try to heal all over again—this time without a valid passport or a visa or my power cord. I have gathered several wooden flutes, though—from facebook marketplace and ebay. Maybe it is time to compose another song.
About the author: V A V A V (he/they)
Transmasc human working on his PhD in Physics.