Category: General Cerebral Leakage (Page 11 of 26)

Ah, it’s that time of year to fondly remember those men we call ‘Dad’.

Just try not to remember TOO many details, though…

“Hey, son! I got a new starter for your pickup–why don’t you and Phillip K. Ballz¹Do I have to point out that’s not his real name? But may I point out that Phillip K. ----- is a real name? come on outside and help me get it up running again!”

Despite it being one miserably cold Kansas spring evening, you better believe that it wasn’t more than 30 seconds later that me and my bestie, ol’ PKB, found ourselves on our backs on the half-frozen ground, one holding a flashlight and the other passing parts and tools to my dad. But lemme tell you boy: the pain, suffering and sacrifice was going to all be worth it.

Getting ol’ Peppermint Paddy up and zooming around Rolla and surrounding countryside again? I mean, what more could two teenagers with 1 driver’s license, 0 reliable modes of transportation, and 31 total years between them ever dream of?

Now, I need to back up a sec because you’re probably thinking, “Hey, who or what is this Peppermint Paddy gal? Obviously, you’re trying to retroactively name a vehicle from your youth, but you’ve never mentioned any other sweet, sweet rides other than Kountry Kommodities and Moby D*ck. And that one tractor of your neighbors that you royally effed up.”

While ’tis true that Moby D*ck was my first true vehicular love as a teen, before that there was Peppermint Paddy: the old red-and-white striped ’87 Chevy Silverado flatbed farm pickup that used to be my Grandpa Harold’s before he passed away. It had been sitting abandoned in one of our fields halfway on the other side of Morton County for a good 4-5 years, when one day, my dad says to me, “Son, I’m tired of hauling your ass to and from school every day. Now that you finally got your license, it’s about time we hauled that pickup out of the weeds and fixed it up so it can be your very own. And, also, so you will stop bothering my wife²I.e., my stepmom. to let her lend you her sweet, sweet Eagle Vision every time your want to go bum around in town with you city-slicker friends like that dipshit, PKB.”

And let me tell you something: you would be surprised at how out-of-my-mind excited I was to hear those words coming out of his mouth. Sure, one might listen to him and hear: “I’m going to spend almost exactly zero dollars on a vehicle for you, and instead going to give you this old, stinky, mouse-infested, barely-running, incredibly unsexy, busted-ass pickup that I totally forgot we even owned.”

Or, if you were like me, desperate for any set of wheels that could transport me off and away from the boring-ass farm any time I wished, you would have heard: “Hark, my youngest and most beloved son, behold: something that barely qualifies as a ‘vehicle’, all for thine own sole possession! Verily, I know you have wept countless nights out of desperation for such a miracle, and, lo, I have heard your cries, and I have answered them.”

In other words, I cherished that gift like he had just given me the keys to a shimmering-purple Lamborghini instead. Sure, it actually had been mouse-infested when I took possession of it (both dead and alive, and plenty of murine fecal matter thrown in just for funs).

And it was greasy. And it was dirty.

And it was stinky because Grandpa had been a smoker.

In fact, it was such a teen-girl-turn-off, Hot-Wheels-hot-mess, that for a moment I had to question my memory of the chronological events of my high school days on the farm, because I’m almost certain that–though impossible without the aid of time travel–the legendary “Dirty Bob” must have been driving it regularly before I got it. Dirty Bob–you remember him, right?

But I digress; back to my love of this motorized means of transport: I mean, who has two thumbs and would spend an entire dreary Saturday in March with a bucket of soap and water, scrubbing down every square inch of a piece-of-shit pickup, inside and out?

I’ll tell you who: this guy! *points at self with both thumbs*

And, seeing as how, well, you’re never going to get some of those particular smells to ever truly go away, I even treated my baby to not one…not two…but THREE of those vanilla and/or coconut-scented cardboard trees you hang from the rear-view mirror. You know, the ones that most people think don’t actually exist outside of the smoke-filled taxi cabs of the silver screen.

Ah, yes, my Sweet Chariot…she swung low for me and carried me away from my boring-ass home on the farm maybe 10-15 times before her starter went out, and instead of finding herself abandoned in some wheat field, she found herself abandoned in our driveway where she would sit for weeks before that fateful day Dad came home with a new starter in hand…

“Oh my god, I know sometimes he can be a real oaf sometimes, but sometimes Dad can be the best dad in the whole world!”

I couldn’t help mildly gushing to PKB behind my dad’s back while we both lay there in the dirt with random rocks indubitably poking us in the kidneys. Dad had just ran inside to grab one last tool before we put the finishing touches on ol’ Peppermint Paddy’s new starter, and we were taking the opportunity to let our inner giddy schoolgirls shine.

It would be an understatement to say that we were both pleasantly surprised by Dad’s somewhat out-of-character act of altruism, yet there we were, on the verge of having a ride that would allow us to actually hang out after school once again.

“All right, boys, fire it up! Let’s see if we’re back in business!”

I hopped in the driver’s seat as PKB dusted himself off before slamming the hood shut. Dad, for his part, just stood back to admire his handiwork as I held my breath and turned the key.

“VAAAAAROOOOOOM!”

She fired right up just like the day she was driven off the lot.

I hopped out of the pickup and on over to PKB, where we proceeded to exchange a copious and unnecessary amount of high-fives.

“We’re back in business! We’re back in business! We’re back in business, Babyyyyyyy!” we chanted.

Dad looked at us kind of funny and flashed his sh*t-eating grin like he knew some secret we didn’t or something.

“What do you mean ‘we’, Kemosabis? You two turds aren’t back in nobody’s business. When I say ‘we’re back in business,’ what exactly did you think I mean?”

“Well, Kind And Loving Father, you did just fix my pickup, no?”

“Son, what kind of ‘business’ are you ever involved in? Pfft! I’m talking about the family business, where real work is done. Our farm is back in business.”

“Uh, dude, what is your old man talking about?” PKB, in his sincere confusion, unintentionally did one of his best Beavis and Butthead to date (’twas 1997, after all).

“Oh, I forgot to tell you? Yeah, um, so I’ll be needing to use your pickup in the morning. And for the indefinite future. My pickup blew a transmission line and I’m not sure when we’ll have enough money to get that fixed, so…”

*crickets*

“Yeah, well anyways thanks for your help boys. I couldn’t have fixed ‘er without ya.”

Why, that son of a biscuit…

Content created on: 11/12 June 2022 (Sat/Sun)

If you’re lucky, a cat or mouse will only scratch you.

If you’re unlucky, they might just scar you for life…

“Mommy, Mommy! Where is the other half of Whiskers¹Not the cat’s real name, but not because I’m trying to protect that dumb-asses’ privacy, but because I just can’t remember it.?!?”

I can still vividly remember a time when shutting the car door all by myself was an achievement worth celebrating. Especially because back then our family vehicle was this ugly green, late 1970’s certifiable land yacht. I don’t recall the exact make and model–probably an Oldsmobile or Buick, no doubt–but the body of this mechanical beast had to have been made out of pure, solid iron.

For all practical purposes, there was very little that separated the front passenger door from it’s close cousin, the bank vault door. So, yeah, getting my little body to muster up the muscular strength of a 10-year-old (or two 5-year-olds, or ten 1-year-olds), and getting that door shut was something that was very much pat-myself-on-the-back-worthy.

However, when that big day finally arrived when my wildest dreams came to fruition, things didn’t play out exactly as I had imagined they would. Did I get a ticker-tape parade for being such a Big Boy? Was there confetti streaming down from the car’s rafters to enhance this magical moment? Was there any patting-on-the-back, whether by my own hand or that of another?

Let’s see…”no,” “nope,” and “negatory.” Does that answer my²I really wanted to type “your questions” here, but let’s be honest: you weren’t the one asking them. questions? Yes, it does.

Yet, I remember that milestone so clearly.

For all the wrong reasons, of course.

After a couple of really good tugs, I had finally overcome the friction on the door hinges, and to my sheer delight, the door quickly gained momentum and swung solidly shut. Well, almost solidly shut…

To my horror, in that split second between getting over the frictional energy barrier and the door latching in place, our idiot cat Whiskers–or whatever his name was–decided he wanted to come on our trip with us and, like a half-drunk motorist trying to race a train across a railroad crossing, he gambled when the odds were not “ever in his favor.”³I almost instantly regreted including a reference from The Hunger Games here… That little dipshit actually thought he could make it into the car before the door shut all the way.

To his credit though, it turns out he was half right.

The door started swinging shut, Whiskers appeared out of nowhere and prepared to launch, and all I could do was be awash in a feeling of helplessness as I had just enough time to not only realize what was about to happen, but to also realize that there was no way I could stop that door once I got it moving.

“NOOOOOOOOoooooooooo…!”

KER-CHUNK!

Next thing I knew, with my little eyes I was spying exactly one half of a cat inside the car–the front half, rib cage to nose, to be exact. And thus leaving only one logical conclusion as to where the other half of Whiskers was–outside the car.

Holy. Sh*t. Batman.

Had I just guillotined our precious feline friend right in two⁴TOOL reference!?!? Hello, instant childhood PTSD!

While I sat there, dazed and traumatized, Mom acted quick on her feet, leaning over and opening the door back up lickety-split (fun fact: it’s much easier to get those doors to budge when you’re a grown-ass woman).

…And just like a classic magic trick, voilà! The hind quarters and tail of ol’ Whiskers reappeared!

By some miracle, I had not, in fact, severed his spine. And apparently all his other internal organs got safely smushed to either inside or outside the car upon impact, and had slid right back into place once the door was re-opened. So, in the end, that lucky little bastard turned out just fine and no worse for the wear.

I, on the other hand, not so much. Verily, with a mere 4 years of worldly experience under my belt, I could put my hand over my little heart and swear to you, “I was in no way emotionally prepared for this…”

“Professor A., I think you are ready to learn how to run one of our scientific studies end-to-end. First things first, though: specimen preparation.”

It was halfway through my first year of working in a small-animal MRI lab, and my boss, Four-Quart Willie,⁵Not his real name, but if you can figure out what this real (professional) name is, and why I use this moniker for him, I think you would chuckle lightly to yourself as much as I do every time I type it. loved to feed the ego of those of us freshly off the PhD assembly line by referring to us “Professors.”

Indeed, it was a very effective way to convince me to move away from my expertise in image and data processing and/or wrangling, and to start getting my hands dirty directly dealing with the rodents his lab loved to study so much: mice.

Now, I had exactly zero interest in the whole proposal, but how could I resist someone who esteemed me at the level of professor? Amiright?

At this point, it is critical to understand that the bread-and-butter of our scientific endeavors is what is called ex vivo MRI scans. Instead of gently sedating a mouse or rat and scanning them while they are alive and breathing (that would be in vivo), we yada yada ya…and scan only their extracted skull and brain.

To get an idea of why this is preferred, here are comparative examples of in vivo (left) and ex vivo (right) MRI images of a mouse brain:

Take a gander at those two pics, and you tell me whether a scientist such as myself would prefer those little rascals dead or alive? Yeah, the choice is pretty clear: those mice are better off dead to us.

Anyways, the very next week I had the privilege of being trained in the ways of “specimen preparation”: the aforementioned yada yada ya that encompasses whatever happens in between “mouse starts day like every other day with a snack and a good poo” and “mouse’s skull and brain end up floating in a tiny sealed tube, ready to be scanned.”

I should also mention another very important thing to know about this business, and that is that animal comfort and safety is taken very seriously. There are like, a million-thousand rules and regulations about handling animals involved in experiments, especially when it comes to what we in the biz call “sacrificing” them–aka killing them until they are dead. We have to follow strict procedures to minimize any suffering they might endure in the process.

With such humane guardrails in place, I hadn’t given much thought to that whole part of the process when I walked into our surgery room for training that particular morning. I had no doubt in my mind that Step One would involve something similar to, say, putting them in a small box and, oh, I don’t know, maybe pumping it full of carbon dioxide, followed up with a barely noticeable shot in the tail that would dreamily send them off to never-never land.

Or, as I like to call it, “gently leading them into the dark.” Sounds almost…romantic, doesn’t it?⁶Probably because it hearkens memories of that Death Cab For Cutie song, “I Will Follow You Into The Dark.”

Well…at least I got the first sub-step half right. You know, the part about the mild sedation to initially knock them out.

After that? Oh boy…how do I put this?

Yada yada ya…and the next thing I know, I’m staring at a very much still-living mouse laying on its back, all 4 paws pinned back in what appeared to be some sort of sacrilegious attempt to accurately recreate a murine version of the whole Jesus-on-the-cross scene.

And how did I know it was still alive, you might be wondering? Did I feel for its pulse? Did I hold a mirror up to its tiny nose and look for it to fog up?

Nope. Nothing that subtle.

No, all I had to do was look at its heart, and…yup, still pounding away. Oh, did I mention that its chest cavity was split wide ----- open? Yeah, rib cages pinned to the side and everything.

I was in complete shock at the sight of its little lungs still rapidly expanding and contracting, its heart furiously pumping, and the rest of all its innards, just hanging out doing their thang, on display for the whole ----- world to see.

I kinda blacked out most of what happened after that, but I’m pretty sure once it was all said and done, I went and found a secluded spot outside and sobbed gently for a good 5 minutes.

I mean, what the ----- did I just witness???

It was, as we say in the business, a real mind- ----- .

Of course, when I went home that evening to The Boss Lady and she asked me how my day went, I had to relive the horror all over again.

Verily, with a mere 34 years of worldly experience under my belt, I had to put my blood-stained hand over my little heart and swear to her, “Oh Sweet Baby Jesus, I was in no way emotionally prepared for this…”

Content created on: 25/26/27 March 2022 (Fri/Sat/Sun)