Somehow the theater was even more intimidating the second visit. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the dual towers of electricity standing tall ahead of me. Frank, still dressed in that bright red lab coat, waved at us when we approached. He was standing up on the stage looking over some stuff on a monitor, and with the audience starting to gather for the show behind us, we decided to just stay behind and find some seats. Finding them proved harder than expected, with so many people already showing up early.

            I continued to stare at what I was starting to call the “Cage of Death” in my mind. Being so close to it felt intimidating, and I hadn’t even seen the show yet. Instinctively I tightened my grip with my hands, inadvertently squeezing Lizzie’s hand more. She brought it up to her lips and kissed the back of my hand and smiled at me. I let her smile do its magic and felt my own dimples form.

            A few minutes later the lights in the theater dimmed slightly, and Frank cleared his throat. Eyes turned to him at the monitor/podium he was at, but he quickly moved to center stage, and threw his arms to the side in greeting. “Welcome to Lightning! The best electricity show in the country!” He paused, and the audience welcomed themselves with applause. “My name is Frank Bailey, and while I would like to tell you I am the star of the show, I would be a liar. That’s because the real star of the show…” he paused, gesturing behind him to the massive structure, “is this beast of a machine behind me. I’m sure you’ve been staring at it since you’ve come in. So, let’s not waste any more time here, shall we? Let’s see what this thing can do!”

            He then made his way back to the podium, and I noticed how quiet the auditorium had gotten, excitement starting to spread all around. Frank pulled something from the podium and showed off nice red headphones that matched his bright red suit. “Fair warning, this could get loud, so feel free to cover your ears.” I nervously glanced over to my girlfriend who already had hands to her ears. She noticed my stare, and just gave a goofy grin.

            The lights dimmed to near complete darkness about then, and I too covered my ears. A small pole that I hadn’t noticed before rose from the ground in front of the towers of electricity, stopping just below them. For a bit, all was quiet. Then…

            CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

            A bolt of electricity loudly appeared and connected itself between the leftmost tower and the pole’s top, sounding like a mix between a gunshot and the world’s loudest clap. Seven more zaps followed. And they were loud. Even with my hands covering my ears, the sound still vibrated my very core.

            And it was so cool!

I could see the firework comparison now, loud obnoxious sound effects over the prettiest and craziest sights. The bolts themselves, while only visible for a fraction of a second, were gorgeous to stare at. It was hard to say why, but seeing a bright light zigzag its way through the air, disappear, and reappear in a completely different form, just caught my eye.

            The lights came back on, and everyone politely applauded. I found myself clapping surprisingly hard out of respect for what I had just seen, and a couple people looked my way a bit strangely. Embarrassed, I put my head down, and side-eyed my girlfriend, who had the smuggest told you that you’d enjoy it face I’d ever seen. I wanted to wipe that smug look off her face.

            Frank came back to center stage, smiling a scientist’s smile. “I warned you all about the noise.” The audience laughed.

            For the next several minutes, Frank began to explain a lot of the basics behind electricity and how it reacted to things. I was surprised at how simple a lot of the concepts were in the end, unsure if it was my teaching aspirations and desire for learning, or if Frank was just a good tutor. A lot of memories of my middle school days came back where we learned about positive and negative charges, the attract and repel natures of charges, and the transfer of charges through contact. Throughout the whole thing, I stayed fully engaged, and the whole thing felt so damn exciting. I was somewhat interested in a lot of the other exhibits, but something about electricity and the fascinating science behind it made the show easily the highlight of my day so far. Frank had a lot of experiments along the way, again displaying the lightning striking several poles, but tuned humorously to the Super Mario Bros. theme. He asked a couple of volunteers to demonstrate some other experiments, one with static electricity and another with the flow of electricity through contact. I had a giddy smile the whole way through and found myself raising my hand to answer a lot of Frank’s audience questions. I couldn’t help myself, why was I so into this show!? My mind was so engaged that I had completely forgotten about what the finale of the show would be.

            “Now, I want you all to quickly imagine that there’s a big thunderstorm going on and you’re outside. Where would you go to avoid a potential lightning strike?”

            “Inside!” a kid yelled.

            “Your car!” piped another audience member.

            “Right, under shelter, in your house, in your car. As long as you’re protected with a ceiling, right? You there, you said your car. Why did you say that?”

            The audience member looked surprised at being noticed. “I just heard somewhere that it’s the safest place to go to avoid being struck by lightning.”

            Frank gave a warming smile. “And you’d be right, props to whoever told you that. That’s right folks, your car is actually the safest place to be during a thunderstorm. Which begs the question. Why? Any ideas?”

            A couple seconds of silence, and someone shouted “The tires?”

            “Good thought!” he said with a finger raised to the air. He was such a natural performer, I observed. “So far, we’ve learned the difference between conductors and insulators, and how they relate to electricity. So, what if the reason cars are so safe is because they have rubber tires? Rubber is an insulator, so it should be safe from electricity, right?”

            A couple of people nodded, but a couple others smiled knowingly and whispered to their friends that they knew that wasn’t the reason.

            “Let’s test that theory,” Frank quipped, moving back toward the monitor. A button pressed caused a pole that I hadn’t noticed yet, with a tire at the very top. Inside of the tire were several metallic poles, protected seemingly by the rubber of the tire. The lights dimmed again, and everyone covered their ears. For a while, nothing seemed to happen, and then…

            CLAP! CLAP!

            The bolts returned, striking the metal inside the tires. And to many people’s surprise, the bolts were practically weaving their way around the rubber of the tire to strike in the open hole off to the side. The bolts loudly struck the poles four times, five, six, seven, eight…

            Eventually the lights returned, and the tire lowered back to the ground. “So clearly, that didn’t work. Some of you may have noticed that the tire had metallic poles in their center. Despite an insulator like rubber blocking the path to the metal, the bolts still found a way to strike. So, the tires aren’t the safety in a car. Any other ideas?”

            “The metal surrounding the car,” one of the smart alecks who obviously already knew the answer from earlier said with a deadpan.

            Frank’s smile didn’t waver, instead putting a finger thoughtfully to his chin. “Interesting. So perhaps we’re thinking in reverse. What if instead of putting an insulator between us and the lightning, we instead put a conductor? And our strategy would be that the lightning, searching for the most conductive thing in its path, always chooses to strike the metal before the person.”

            A hand raised from the audience, and Frank gestured to the young girl in the middle row. “You have a question?”

            “I mean… isn’t it just ‘cause the car is completely covered? The lightning can’t hit you ‘cause there’s no way for it to do so?”

            Frank’s smile widened, as though he had hoped that very question would be asked. “A fantastic question. I would like to test both of our theories with our final experiment of the show. I’m sure a lot of you have been wondering about this giant bird cage thing behind me.”

            My heart skipped a beat. I had completely forgotten about the cage. My eyes widened and I locked my eyes on Frank with rapt attention, realizing the demonstration he wanted me to watch—and potentially participate in—was about to happen.

            “As we can tell, it is made of metal, a conductor, as we’ve learned so far. Which means that it should be able intercept the bolts from hitting someone inside. However, as the charming young lady in the audience pointed out, the cage most certainly is not completely covered all the way. There’s plenty of gaps all around, so perhaps it is not completely safe. Now, I’m about to do something that might seem incredibly stupid to a lot of you.” He smiled, and a couple people-including the girl who spoke up a second ago-gasped, as they realized just what Frank was about to do. He giddily walked toward the bird cage, found the entrance, walked in, and closed the metallic door behind him. Inside was another control panel that he immediately fiddled with. The cage slowly began to rise in the air. My stomach was churning.

            He continued to talk as he ascended. “As you can tell, I am putting my own life on the line here to test this theory. If what the gentleman said was correct, the cage should protect me from getting hit by the lightning strikes because of the metal surrounding me. No matter what angle you come from, there’s a conductor there to take the blow of the electricity instead.”

            The lights dimmed and the theater was as silent as it was all show. The machine powered on, and we all waited. I stared right at Frank, imagining myself in his place, surrounded by a cage, several feet up in the air. Frank put his headphones back on, and I quickly shuddered. I couldn’t even imagine how loud it was going to get in there. It’s going to be fine… I thought to myself. Frank’s done this dozens, if not hundreds of times. He wouldn’t do it if he thought it wasn’t safe. Lizzie’s hand squeezed harder, and I gave her a nervous glance. She just smiled warmly and whispered, “This is your moment, right here.” I gulped, and she brought our held hands together and kissed it gently. I brought my eyes back to the cage and saw Frank staring in our general direction. I couldn’t tell if he could see us with the lighting as it was, but it felt like he was matching my gaze giving me a slight grin.

            CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

            The lightning struck hard and hit the sides of the cage, while Frank stood harmlessly and triumphantly inside. The audience oohed and applauded amid the loud strikes of lightning. Frank amusingly waved to the audience. “As you can see,” CLAP! “I am perfectly safe within the walls of the cage. Which confirms our theory. The reason the car” CLAP! “is the safest place to be during a storm is because of the metallic covering. And as we can see, even if the structure isn’t fully covered, the lightning still will not be able to get to me. In fact…” Frank had been walking around the cage, but now he stopped and reached out his hand and touched the metallic inner side of the cage. Right behind where the lightning was striking. A lot of people gasped in fear, but seeing his confident poise instead applauded. I sat stunned. He was now running his fingers across the Cage of Death on the metal, The lightning, try as it might, wouldn’t touch him. He was still as confident as ever and was even continuing to explain all that was happening.

            My mind was racing so much that I hardly even noticed when the cage lowered, and Frank concluded the show. I just pictured myself in that exact position, standing perfectly safe while beautiful lightning bolts struck all around me. I thought about all the nerves I had going in, and the confidence that Frank showed inside. I was reminded of my first experience riding a roller coaster, getting incredibly nervous before finding myself cheering and whooping through the whole thing, and felt like this had to feel very similar in thrills.

            The show was over then. The audience around started murmuring, and a couple of people went up to Frank and started asking him all kinds of questions. Lizzie squeezed my hand, and we took each other’s gazes in. “So? How was it?”

            “That… was so exhilarating!” I replied, very giddy. “Wow, that had to have been the highlight of my day, how the hell did your uncle even get this job!?”

            “Told ya you’d like it!” she beamed. “Like I said, it’s like fireworks, but even more rare!”

            We waited patiently for the crowd to clear from their questions before we approached. Frank turned and held his arms up in welcome. “Cool stuff, am I right? Did you enjoy the show, Beck? How are you feeling?”

            I just gave him my most lopsided grin. “I’m so in.”