Ranking Lab Equipment by How Much I’d Like to Bite Into It

By Lauren Matz | Photo by Alex Gaines

Picture this. It’s 7:30pm, and you’ve been out of your dorm in the name of film for the past twelve hours. A wicked concoction of 2 Redbulls, one large coffee, a couple bananas that are simultaneously green and brown, and my ration of Domino’s pizza floats around in your stomach as it grumbles loudly, begging for a real meal. Your ears have been absolutely fucked into the next lifetime by the crunchy ass lavalier mics and the boom operator that keeps slamming the boompole into the wall. Yep, that was me. God I wish I could sleep. God I wish I could sleep.

As my dead eyes go back to scanning the room, they settle on a piece of miscellaneous lab equipment that lays rejected on the Metcalf lab countertop. Hold on… it looks almost… tasty? No. I can’t be thinking this way. This ISN’T ME. But what if I just took a little nibble… I have to hold back. I have to restrain myself. Maybe I should take that XLR cable and just start spinning around with it. 

Fuck it. Despite being a film student and having no real knowledge of what these gadgets and doodads are called, I’m going to rank lab equipment by how much they tempt me for a bite.

In first place BY FAR comes the beautiful girl Pipette. I mean, come on. They’re practically made to be chewed on. You could give one to a baby and they’d probably never touch their damn teething rings again. She’s soft, supple, and laid out waiting for me like a good girl.

Next comes the Erlenmeyer flask. Call me crazy, but if we smashed it up a little it could be like a bag of chips. I’ll come out of that lab looking like Jackie Kennedy with the sheet metal in her mouth– but it’s glass instead. #builtdifferent #besteater

Finally, I have to give a shoutout to my girl Petri Dish. You ever see what those science girls are cooking up in there?? Shit looks like Pop Rocks. I bet when they discovered Nerds Gummy Clusters it was because some hungry STEM student decided to run an experiment and see if their class assignment was edible. I know that Petri good!

Thankfully, I did make it off the film set that day without taking a bite out of anything. But sometimes, when I’m stuck in class and feel my stomach calling out to me, I think of them <3 I’ll come back for them someday.