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Marty doesn't remember the first time he heard about Doc Brown. It might have been from his parents. It might have been some old folks chewing the fat in a booth nearby while he and his buddies hung out drinking pepsi. It might have been the convenience store clerk, chatting to someone in line ahead of him.
Emmett Brown, Phd and resident of Hill Valley had won a state prize for inventing some kind of 'hover-board' prototype. Everybody was talking about it, in tones that suggested it was a little unexpected and a lot undeserved.
Marty *does* remember the first time it came into his head that he wanted to meet Doc Brown. When he heard Strickland complaining to one of the teachers about 'that crackpot Brown', Marty thought to himself that any adult that Strickland hated couldn't be that bad.
Later on, while heading home on his skateboard, he idly wondered how a hover-board could possibly work, and the thought occurred again and lingered. He wanted to know more about this man, this pariah, this insane genius who had earned the ire of the entire town of Hill Valley. That night he even looked him up in the phone book, tearing the page from its spot and stuffing it in his pocket. It was kind of crazy, he thought, but he liked the idea that he might, that he could do this crazy thing if he wanted. No one could stop him. The possibility of it tickled his brain.
The next day he took a detour, telling himself he was going the long way home. His detour led him to the address he'd read in the phone book, now etched into his mind. He arrived to find a structure that looked more like a garage than a house. It would have stuck out like a raised middle finger in a cookie-cutter neighborhood like his own. Marty decided he liked it already.
So what are you waiting for? Are you chicken? He dared himself to go past the chain link fence. No lock - it opened with a light tug.
Leaving his skateboard leaning up against the fence, he went around to the side to get a better look, hoping there would be a window somewhere. Instead he found a door. Curiosity led him to knock on it. Bravery led him inside when there was no answer.
Marty wasn't one of those so-called 'bad kids'. He liked loud music, he slept in a lot, and he always had a smart answer for adults who tried to berate him for either. But he had no desire to mouth off to his parents or cut classes to get drunk or high. He wouldn't even get into fights except for sometimes when fights came to him. He didn't want to shake and break the system. He just had this feeling that there was more. Something else. Something beyond the menial, placid life his parents and his teachers seemed to be herding him towards. He was willing to push himself until he found it.
"Far out," he muttered when he stepped into Doc Brown's lab for the first time. He didn't know adults could be so messy, didn't know they could collect so much clutter. He had no idea what half of it was - he just knew it all looked cool.
Then he nearly wet his pants when a massive BOOM thundered through the air, shaking his ribcage.
This is it! This is the bomb! Marty thought as he dived to the ground.
A screaming man busted out of the door at the other end of the room, and a perverse thought flashed through Marty's mind. Well, at least I won't die alone.
The man threw a pair of padded headphones to the ground. Sticking out wildly from his head in all directions, his crown of white hair was smoking and singed at the ends. He stopped screaming and put his hands over his ears, bending over as if in pain.
Marty realized he wasn't going to die when a large shaggy dog ambled up to him and licked one of his hands, splayed protectively over his head. The dog didn't seem to have been phased by the explosive boom, the screaming man, or the teenaged intruder. That was one easy-going dog.
The man looked over to see what his dog had found. His prominent eyes locked on Marty for the first time.
"What are you doing here?"
Marty took his hands off of his head. "Never mind that, what are you doing in here?! Testing bombs?" Marty pushed himself up to his feet.
"Of course not," the man scoffed. "I was testing sound proof glass. I know perfectly well how bombs work. That one just happened to go off a little early."
"You were using a bomb to test sound proof glass." Marty shook his head a little. "Not to tell you how to do your work, but couldn't you use, well, a big speaker or something?"
The man looked up towards the ceiling as if making calculations in his head. "Well, yes, if I had a very large speaker it might be able to produce the decibel range I need. But it might take some time to acquire one, and I wanted to start working with materials I had on hand."
Marty nodded. "Oh." He didn't think he knew anyone else who had bomb materials on hand the way his mother kept flour and sugar on hand.
"So by the way, what are you doing here?" The older man repeated.
"Um." Marty scratched the back of his head. "I came to ah, congratulate you on winning the Fletcher Prize. You are Doctor Brown, right?"
"Yes. Doctor Emmett Brown." The man offered his hand for Marty to shake, but he still looked sceptical.
Marty shook the man's hand. "I'm Marty McFly. And I was wondering... I mean it's been bugging me. How does your hover-board work?"
"Oh!" Doctor Brown exclaimed, as if that were the perfect explanation. Maybe he thought it was completely natural for teenage boys to be so curious about new inventions they were willing to break into scientists' houses to find answers. Maybe he was just too pleased to care.
The Doc, as Marty nicknamed him in his head, launched into an elaborate description of the physics involved in the working of his new invention.
Marty nodded and smiled, and he could swear he felt a light breeze ruffle the top of his hair as it all went whooshing past, way over his head.
Doc Brown must've read the look on his face pretty clearly, because he went to a nearby chalkboard and tried again, drawing out the concept with an illustration of shapes and lines.
Now Marty could almost understand it. He narrowed his eyes as though he could make the fuzzy concept come into focus just by looking at it hard enough.
Seeing his lingering confusion, the Doc held up one finger and went to root around in one of his boxes on a low shelf. He came up with some plastic soldiers, some marbles, and a little toy car. With a look of delight on his face, he cleared a table top and played out the very basic physical concepts of his invention using these toys. The demonstration ended when the toy car fell onto the ground, smashing to bits on the concrete floor.
Marty's eyes widened. He understood.
"That's heavy, Doc," he said, amazed at not only the concept, but the fact this man had taken the time to explain it to him in a way that he could grasp, without belittling him or making him feel dumb for not getting the more abstract explanation in the first place. "And you came up with that all by yourself?"
"Not all by myself," Doc Brown said humbly. "My scientific predecessors helped immensely, as did my years of education, and all the teachers who ever made an effort to instruct me. Science is a great project that spans continents, centuries, and generations."
"But you were the first one to figure out that specifically."
"Well, yes," the Doc admitted. "You can do amazing things when you set your mind to it."
Marty was sure he'd heard that phrase before, but coming from Doc Brown it didn't sound like an empty platitude. He believed it. And the way he talked about science actually made it sound interesting, for the very first time.
"That's great, Doc," Marty said, and meant it. He lingered a moment longer before realizing that he had no other reason to be there. "Thank you. For the explanation. But I should probably get going now."
"Of course," Doc Brown replied, stepping aside to clear way for Marty to leave. "It was good to meet you, Marty."
"You too, Doc Brown."
Just as Marty reached the door, the Doc called out to him.
"Hold on a minute, Marty." Doc Brown put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, looking like someone who had been asked a difficult question, and was trying to find an answer.
"It occurs to me how rare it is to find someone your age with the kind of scientific curiosity you've demonstrated."
Marty scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, well... it's interesting stuff." He was really more curious about the Doc than he was about his inventions, but he didn't think there was any way to explain that without sounding weird. He realized that he liked this Doc Brown person. It went without saying that the Doc was different, but while everyone else thought that was a bad thing, Marty didn't.
"I was wondering if you'd like to come back and help me. A few times a week perhaps. I could use an assistant, if you have the time and the inclination to taken on an after school job."
Marty didn't have to think very long about the question.
"Yes. That's be great, Doc. I'd love to."