I wanted to be a physicist. When I was in elementary school, I corrected a teacher about the orbits of the planets. In high school, I told a teacher that we could directly image single atoms; she didn't believe me even after I showed her the journal article I saw it in. My parents were of two minds: proud of my scientific aptitude but, being of modest means and Jewish descent, hopeful their only son would become a "real" doctor someday, the medical kind. (sic) I enrolled in the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park, in 1969 and obtained two bachelor's degrees, in physics and astronomy, in 3 years. Michael A'Hearn, my astronomy adviser, told me he was content to add a tiny bit of knowledge to the world-prophetic words from the future team leader of Deep Impact, the space probe that blasted a hole in comet Tempel 1 35 years later. I decided that I, too, wanted to make a small contribution, in experimental physics.