We were eating lunch in the fifth floor cafeteria of Ihinger-Ibex's Minnesota campus. It was April, but there was still enough winter in the air to keep us from venturing outside the corporate park. It was our regular threesome for lunch: me, Pinky, and Joyce Gannet, my wife and boss of the Composite Materials Group. We were sitting in the open section of the cafeteria, even though we all had executive-level badges and could have used the dining room with the suits, when Pinky pulled out a plastic zip-lock bag full of lettuce and set it on the table.

Joy and I looked at each other--Pinky was like a lot of geniuses in that he was developmentally arrested at about age eight, and he often did things to get a rise out of us. Pinky took a couple of leaves out of the baggie and placed them neatly between his hamburger patty and bun.

"Tell me," Joy said, "tell me that you're not brown-bagging your own lettuce."

"Nuh-huh," he said. "It's from the lab. It's an African plant, Brassica; cabbage family. We're looking at it as an anti-fungal. He took a tidy bite from the burger and chewed it carefully. "Tastes neat."

Joy took a leaf from the baggie and sniffed it.

"Try some, it's fresh," Pinky said, his mouth full of food.

Joy broke off two pieces and handed me one. The leaves were crisp, with a slight bitterness about them. At least they had a taste, which was more than I could say for the bland iceberg salads the cafeteria usually served.

"It also seems to be a mild hallucinogen," Pinky offered.