Giving my all for humanity

Einstein was a scatterbrain!  Neener!  Neener!  Neener!

I know.  I shouldn’t build myself up by putting others down. 

You knew that about Albert though, didn’t you?  That his brain was scattered.  Literally.

A pathologist at his autopsy stole his brain and kept it.  In his home.  In jars. 

That’s right – jars.  Plural. 

The guy, Thomas Harvey, had all the good intentions, or so he said.  After the fact, Harvey told Einstein’s family that he had purloined the big man’s brain.  And they gave him permission to keep it! 

I tried to imagine their conversation.  Did he make an anonymous phone call?  “Listen carefully.  I have your father’s brain…”

No, probably something more sheepish: “Ha!  Ha!  You won’t believe the mix up!  The weirdest thing this morning when I opened my cupboard.  Next to the Cheerios!  Yeah!  Your dad’s brain.  I know!  But anyway, since it’s already done…I’m just sayin’.  Research and all.  Yeah.  Yeah?  OK then!  Thanks.”

They gave him the green light and Mr. Harvey promptly pickled Mr. Einstein’s gray matter and diced it into 240 chunks.  Most of those he scattered around the country among various neurologists to help determine if Einstein’s brain was different from the average brain.  (Spoiler alert – it was.)

All for the good of mankind, of course.

And it got me to thinking.  I’m humanitarian.  I’m altruistic.

I have that little pink dot on my driver’s license indicating that, should the occasion present itself, those ghoulish tech-farmers in the morgue can ‘harvest’ my organs.  But is that enough?  Could I do more for mankind?

I began to surmise; maybe I should donate my whole body to a medical science!   

Then I wondered:  What exactly would happen to my dearest dead body if I did?  I found out, and in scientific terms – Yikes.

For starters, my beloved carcass could be used for a “safety study” wherein researchers would gleefully subject it to an impact with a car's steering wheel — and record the resulting injuries to help design crash-test dummies.  Think “Myth Busters.”

Or forensic researchers might use my favorite cadaver to study decomposition, including that caused by flesh-eating insects.  Ewww!  They do this to help law enforcement better pinpoint a victim's time of death.  Or, they might re-create a crime scene posing me to test hypotheses about the cause of death in a specific murder. 

You know I love the CSI, but, but…

Then I thought hopefully, maybe I could specify that my precious remains be used for medical training.  Alas.  I discovered that creepy new medical students in basic anatomy classes would dissect me “to gain hands-on experience with the human form.”  Let’s face it.  They’re just playing ‘doctor.’ 

OK…I know it wouldn’t be me, per se.  Nevertheless, maybe like Albert, I’ll just donate my brain…

Harvard University Brain Tissue Resource Center?!  Now we’re getting somewhere!  The Brain Bank, as it’s called, has the world’s largest repository of donated brains, more than 7000.  But… they’re stored on shelves in Tupperware bins?  Labeled with Sharpies.  “B-4762.”  “B-1378.” 

I get it.  They’re brains.  But in under-the-bed bins for space-saving convenience and an end to your clutter problems forever? 

The space looked like a commercial kitchen and as God is my witness, they used a bread knife to slice away “precise” cross-sections for study!  Not a jigsaw in sight.

I expected more from Harvard. 

An online video from National Geographic traces the steps of a Brain Bank technician as he reports to work at 11PM.  He collects a cardboard box taped closed across its bulging top with a wet and soggy corner.  We’re told the box contains a brain that arrived earlier in the day.  It has been on ice until now to avoid “quality decline,” which you and I both know means that brain might “go bad” – like tuna salad under the noonday sun at a 4^th of July picnic. 

I couldn’t help thinking of Eyegore, Young Frankenstein’s assistant, shopping through the local collection of brains-in-jars for Herr Doctor’s experiment in reanimation.  He brought back one labeled “Abby Normal.”  Probably outlasted its “use by” date, just like at the Brain Bank.

No thank you very much.  I’ll keep this noggin intact...  No real loss to humanity.

After all, I’m no Einstein.

Mind your own bucket list!

George Carlin said he wasn’t afraid of being dead, just getting dead. 

But nowadays, many of us seem to expect an empty dance card after we cross the threshold.  How else can we account for the rise of the “bucket list”?  Gotta cram in a lot of living, because once you’re dead…Well!  Nothing to do.   

As an aside - An easy way out of this conundrum is to adopt a belief in reincarnation.  Takes the pressure off.  Plenty of time to get to Niagara Falls.   

Of course that approach could be disastrous for procrastinators. 

Anyway, we’re inundated with these lists.  Sure, we all want to see the Great Wall.  Fair enough.  Go hot air ballooning?  OK. 

But the other day I got one of those email chain letters containing someone else’s bucket list, apparently as a yardstick asking, “What have you done in your life anyway?”   

This one admonishes me to “Play along - Whether you've done this before or not, be a good sport!  Do it again.”  

Of course, being a good sport is on my bucket list - my list of things I really must get around to sometime when I’m not such a crab.   

And after all, it’s so simple to join the fun:  Just place an X by all the things you've done on this list, and remove the X from the ones you have not yet done, (but like any normal person must be hankering to do).  Then, and this is where I came in, send it on to at least six of your do-nothing friends. 

But this isn’t a compilation of exhilarating activities or thrilling locales for which the human spirit yearns.  This one’s more a chronicle of stuff the originator of the chain has done over the course of his life reflecting everything from the mundane to “Really?  You really hope to do that before you die?”   

No, this a “look what I’ve done that you probably haven’t done list.”  Or maybe it’s a “look at what I’ve done since I left the holler” list, shuffled together with “some things I saw pictures of in National Geographic.”  

For example, the first thing on the list is “shot a gun” and the second is “gone on a blind date.”  Now why these two things would be numbers one and two in a must-do catalog is hard to fathom, neither being all that life affirming, if memory serves.   

Although, maybe if I’d had a gun back in the day, on that blind date, I could have discouraged the guy whom I’ve referred ever since as “Clammy Hands Hank.”   

Another accidental pairing on the list is the juxtaposition of “skipped school” and “visited Canada.”  As it turns out, I’ve done both.  But my adolescent shenanigans and summer vacations don’t seem nearly as life altering as those of the guys from the ‘60’s who skipped school for the purpose of going to Canada.  Put that on your bucket list. 

I also checked off “camped in an RV” and “cried yourself to sleep,” though I doubt the list maker envisioned the cause-effect relationship that created that outdoor catastrophe. 

Still, I’m playing along.   

Let’s see.  It’s probably an overstatement to claim my single sad attempt at “waterskiing” as “having a near death experience,” but I’m marking both those off anyway. 

A couple of things on the list had me feeling wistful:  Riding a Segway.  No!  Not really!  Dog sledding…Ha ha!  Just driving the point home. 

It’s not my list!  Maybe I’ll modify this list.  You know, make it my own. 

My wish?  To go to some of these places without having to go through airport security. 

I’d just like to whisk myself away to the Galapagos Islands without actually having to pack, commute to the airport, stand barefoot on the cold linoleum, be surveyed in a public x-ray while feeling liked a plucked chicken, wedge myself into the middle seat, and fly for 12 hours while making nice with someone else’s Aunt Julia and telling my bladder “no.”  

So maybe my bucket list item is to live long enough to travel by transporter beam.  

In short, I want to be there without having to get there.  I think George Carlin would understand.

Crocodile Tears in the House of Representatives: Or, There's No Crying in Politics

So John Boehner has a soft heart…

The “Weeper of the House,” it turns out, is known for being “touched by a moment, a speech, or a comment, whether it’s from a constituent or a fellow member of Congress.”

And there’s sure plenty for him to cry about these days what with the Tea Party splitting the Republican vote in a couple of key races, and the Senate still in the hands of the Democrats.

I saw Boehner struggling to contain his emotions when he took the podium election night after he learned he would be the new Speaker of the House of Representatives. His memories of his personal history overwhelmed him in the moment of stepping from humble beginnings into such a high-profile and powerful position. So he cried.

Thank God. I’m not the only one who cries all the time. I can definitely share a moment with our new Speaker. I’ve been choking up over everything from the commonplace to the obscure for decades. It’s not the most desirable public image, but if like Mr. Boehner and me, you’ve got the Curse of the Cry, there’s not much to do about it.

Wait. I saw some advice on the Today Show recently giving a new strategy to help a person avoid crying when s/he doesn’t want to. It was in a segment including how to relieve the hiccups, to put it into perspective.

Anyway the new strategy is, when you think you might break down into tears and you don’t want to, since you’re at the podium in a televised national news conference, you should clear your throat and then swallow.

The thinking is that this gives your muscles and reflexes a chance to reset. And it gives you and Moses something besides “Oh no! Here comes the flood!” to think about.

I tried it the other day while watching the first episode of National Geographic’s “Great Migrations.” There are some heart-wrenching scenes in that spectacular footage. The one that got me was when the wildebeests crossed that same darn river at the same darn place where they cross every year. Why do they keep going back there? The crocodiles go there every year too. Duh! You’d think the gnus would at least go upstream a ways, ‘cause those crocs are ENORMOUS. They can practically swallow a little gnu in one nightmarish gulp.

That’s exactly what was happening, actually. This horrifically huge crocodile caught a young wildebeest by the lower half. The baby called out to its mother watching helplessly onshore, and I started to…but wait, let me just clear my throat. Ahem. And now I’ll swallow. Very gentile, I found. And…It worked! I was momentarily removed from the emotion. It is a video, after all.

But since I sat safe at home in my recliner, next to my husband who I must note was not unmoved by the drama, rather than in the glare of a Washington press conference, I still let a tear fall for that animal and its mother. They are so stupid it’s infuriating. And – you’ve heard it before – for some of us, when we’re mad, we cry. Infuriating in itself.

And what’s so bad about crying anyway? So what if we show that we’re touched, or moved, or saddened? Those of us with the Crying Curse are certainly free of ulcers. The rest of you strong hold-it-in types think you’re so smart. What? There’s no crying in politics?

In the coming months John Boehner will likely find himself in multiple situations where he’ll want to cry, particularly if he pursues the same “Party of No” strategy the Republicans have taken up since 2008. That pesky Democratically-controlled Senate will no doubt frustrate him. The President’s veto pen may have him reliving his childhood struggles once more. That’s when the tears are likely to flow.

So it’s important to note, Mr. Boehner, that crying will not prove an effective strategy for getting Senators to change their votes. Nor will pouting or shouting. My advice? A respectful approach coupled with good faith negotiation can be disarming even among the most ravenous crocodiles with whom you’re swimming.

Set name calling and tattling aside. Bring straight talk and genuine collaboration to the forefront. There’s your formula for a tear-free two years.

Then of course, you get the group hug.