Once upon a life: Jonathan Safran Foer

When he was just nine years old an explosion in the science lab at summer camp seriously injured him and almost killed his best friend. Jonathan Safran Foer returns to that terrible day in 1985 to examine the scars the blast left – and explain why the wounds are more than skin deep

Jonathan Safran Foer
The Observer, Sunday 28 February 2010

It was the first day of Summer Discovery Camp, held at Murch Elementary, at which I had finished second grade only a few weeks before. I didn't want to go to camp. I wanted to spend my summer at home doing nothing, as I'd done every previous summer. I'd never been to sleep-away camp, and only a few times to a day camp. My mother used to say she didn't want us away.

I remember sitting on the floor of my parents' bedroom that morning. My father was standing in front of a steamed-over mirror, pulling the skin of his neck taut. My mother was kneeling before an open drawer. I used to love watching my parents do adult things – write cheques, sort mail, empty the dishwasher – because it reminded me of the distance between us, which was what made them my parents, which was what made me safe.

My mother drove us there that day, even though we lived less than half a mile away. I remember clinging to my brother as children filtered in that morning. We were divided into groups, and my brother was separated from me. My group began the day in a science class. The instructor was a graduate student at American University. I remember him being short and somewhat muscular. His hair was brown, I think, and curly.

One of my responses to the explosion was to lose the ability to express, and perhaps even to feel, anger. I never fought with my parents or siblings, and still don't, and don't fight with strangers, friends or my wife. Since I was nine years old, I have not raised my voice to anyone. But thinking about the instructor, now, brings something ugly to my skin. I hope that one of his friends, with whom he's never shared the story, is reading this and will bring it to his attention. That won't happen, of course, as I am not able to use his name for legal reasons. And even if I could have, there's another part of me, which he also had a hand in creating, that wants to protect even him.

The chemistry class was supposed to be an astronomy class, but was switched at the last minute when an instructor took ill. Our first project was to make sparklers, which we would use at the festival at the end of camp.

The class was divided into groups of four, each of which had a table with a bowl in the middle of it. At my table were my best friend, Stewart, one of my classmates, Puja, and a boy I'd never met. At the front of the room, by the chalkboard, were glass vials containing various chemicals. The sparkler "recipe" was written on the board, and I remember (and have had my memory corroborated by various legal documents) that we were to use half of the amounts instructed. I remember thinking that was strange. Why not just write out the proper amounts? The instructor said it was "basically a recipe for gunpowder, with a little extra".

The first time Stewart was allowed to see me outside of his hospital room, we spent the afternoon in the cafeteria of Children's Hospital, with a pen and paper, trying to remember the names of as many of the chemicals as we could. No adult asked us to do this.
The full story at The Observer.