I was on a school field trip when I was 11. We were on the way to a water park at the end of the school year, riding in an old, yellow school bus. We were all as chatty as you'd expect from 5th graders, until the bus got onto the freeway. With all the windows down, the wind started whipping through them so fast that nobody could hear anything. Everybody shut up and started staring off into the distance.

The turbulence in the air was fascinating to me, and not only because sitting in a room full of people with nothing to say to each other is my kryptonite. (I don't sit idle very well.) Moving at 65 miles an hour, the air moved so fast it felt as though it was being sucked out of my lungs. Naturally I dug around in my bookbag and pulled out my snorkel.

Arguably, I've always been weird. Present the same set of stimuli to 99 brains and you'll get a range of reponses from three to three hundred. Present them to me and you'll get a cheese sandwich. I'm just wired that way.