Points in Case |
- Mr. Bones Bares All About Life as a Skeleton in the Modern Classroom
- List: For Sale: Gently Used Dog Food
- Four Benefits of Climate Change, According to a 19th Century Adventurer
| Mr. Bones Bares All About Life as a Skeleton in the Modern Classroom Posted: 30 Apr 2021 10:00 AM PDT “A lot of classroom skeletons, in high schools, universities and medical schools, are real.” –"Classroom Skeleton: Whose Bones Are These?" All Things Considered, March 20, 2018 When they talked about donating your body to science, I didn't think they'd take it so literally. Now, I've always been die-hard fan of scientific achievement. In my past life, I like to think (in that I remember with 100% clarity) that I was a great biologist, a lifelong learner, and rotary printing press of academic writing. I find a bit of gallows humor in the fact that none of those papers, none of those beautiful, award-winning treatises (on the leading contemporary field of phrenology, don't you know), were the thing to do me in. No, it was one line on my driver's license: organ donor. My name is Hugh Meris, M.D., and I am a bona fide human skeleton. Though, in the classroom, I go by Mr. Bones. As a skeleton, I'm a regular fixture in the third grade physiology classroom, never getting any limelight but for that one lesson a year where I get sketched and poked and prodded. Yeah, welcome to the real ivory tower, kiddos. Now, some people would kill for tenure. I still don't get why. It's not like being trapped in a classroom, getting a bare bones "living wage" (A.K.A. pro bono), and having the exact same position year after year after year is exactly "living the life." Learning the ropes never made the job easier either, considering I've always had the hang of things. It's not exactly a walk in the park, being pithed and all. Being a teaching aid (or TA for short) is—quite simply—a dead-end job. No matter your innate inhabitivity, teaching elementary has a way of working you down to the bone. And, frankly, I'm tired. Bone tired. I mean, back in the younger days of my un-life, I didn't have as much of a bone to pick with my situation. Teaching felt like a joint effort, where I shouldered the burden of practical demonstration while the teacher rattled off the dry facts. I really felt like I was making a difference, like I was helping kids stay on the straight and marrow. On my other hand, certain student propensities made me want to give them the ol' knee to the coccyx. First, there were the lazy bones, whose gall even a jaundiced joe couldn't have beat. Second, there were the gossipy girls would complain about their complexion and their lust to be paler, bleaching their hair and hiding from the sun. Really, modern fashion has whitewashed the issue. Sunbleaching is not as nice as it sounds from personal experience. Finally, quite a few boneheaded boys would crack terrible puns at my expense to impress the ladies. The worst of those rascals would even use fart jokes. (How insensitive in front of someone who will never pass gas again!) At the very least, though, no precocious pipsqueaks have tried jumping bones in my presence, something I would never be able to unsee (or stop myself from seeing, lacking eyelids and all). I'll be dead serious with you: I'm burnt out. Sometimes I wonder if life is just pulling my leg, ribbing me for the sins of a prior existence by letting me collect dust when I should be dusting knuckles. I would quit, give this popsicle stand the ol' bone voyage, but where else would I go? And, admittedly, it isn't all bad. Occasionally, one of the acquisitive ankle biters will get it into their skull that they need a shoulder to cry on, to get something off their chest and have a heart-to-heart. One kiddo, Clay Vackle, dragged me into the closet to practice getting out of his own. The rotating cast of teachers that own my body (not that I'm into that sort of thing) liven things up as well. I also very much appreciate that, at least once per year, a student will come into class dressed up like me, albeit a bit spookier and scarier, to show their solidarity and support. Why they always come out right before All Saints' Day is a bit over my head, but I appreciate the assurance that us old-fashioned skeletons are still hip. When I donated my body to science, I had imagined that these old bones would get to see the world. Get some tan lines, meet lots of jaw-dropping ladies at conventions, or maybe even get a paper written about me. Heck, I wouldn't have even been put out to be put in to someone else's dying body, regardless of the curvature of their cranial cavity. At least then my sacrifice would have been worth it. Yes, I certainly made a grave mistake, selflessly giving of my heart and soul. Weariness and wear have certainly crept their way into these old bones. Yet, I just have a feeling that eventually it's going tibia okay.  |
| List: For Sale: Gently Used Dog Food Posted: 30 Apr 2021 07:00 AM PDT Like new! Minor signs of wear. Hardly smells at all. Has been inside a dog for less than five minutes. My Corgi didn't like it, but your dog might. $100 or best offer. This is premium-brand stuff, people. It's organic now, too. For $5 extra, I will put it in a bag before I mail it to you. Call now for this once-in-a-lifetime offer.  |
| Four Benefits of Climate Change, According to a 19th Century Adventurer Posted: 30 Apr 2021 05:00 AM PDT At long last, fair Britannia's genius has warmed the globe with her belching smokestacks and engines of industry, and the cruel polar ice is in retreat. What discoveries, what treasures, await our courage to exploit them! But some lament: "we must preserve the terrible glaciers that stymie science and profit, and upon which our ships are constantly dashed. We cannot predict what foul consequence follows our headlong pride!" Rubbish: I can and will predict it. Prediction the First: Trade! Opium!The northwest passage has ever been something of a Holy Grail of the adventuring set, second only to the Holy Grail itself—and God in his obstinate jealousy has denied both to us. Should the glaciers melt, the seas will rise and our fleets may set sail over the boreal climes of Canada to reach the Orient with unmatched celerity and plumb its dear spices—opium being the dearest and most desirable of all. With this easement in trade, poppies shall proliferate and become as common as Irishmen; we may see an opium den on every corner, and every man, woman, and child in our great society will live in contentment and satiety! We shall become as the lotus-eaters, and languish painlessly in the laudanum haze of paradise. Ah, the ambrosial spice! Opium! Prediction the Second: The southern continent shall have a mountain made of gold.Gold being the heaviest element in the world, it stands to reason that most of it has filtered down to the lowest part of the world—that is, south. Here it will have collected in the Antarctic lands among the other heavy elements to create a very continent of jewels and iron, and from the center of the pole must rise a veritable mountain of gold upon which the native creatures gyre and gambol in innocent play. In short, we should blow up the mountain with dynamite and take all the gold. Prediction the Third: We shall discover a primeval world where dinosaurs yet live, and we may crush them for oil.How could a sheet of ice so vast and encompassing have come into being? Modern science tells us that during the flood of Noah, when the watery firmament fell upon the world, fierce polar winds repelled the rain and froze it as it fell, and it became as a domed roof to the world's extremities. What lies beneath that ice? We know that God intended to save all his creations through the famed Ark of that holy patriarch—so whither the dinosaur, whose bones we have so lately discovered? Here. Under the glaciers. Here we may find the hairy tyrannosaurus with his many horns; and the terrible brachiosaur, so named for the extreme length of his brawny arms. Science tells us furthermore that coal and oil are created by crushing dinosaurs under a great weight (e.g., the waters of the great deluge). With these animals made available to our use, think of the profit! We may seize these dinosaurs, and increase their numbers in parks set aside for that purpose, and then squeeze them in great industrial presses and yield such oil thereby as to lubricate the machines of the empire in perpetuity! Prediction the Fourth: The immortal magicians who rule the hidden land beyond the ice wall cannot stand against us.I recently attended an ecumenical orgy between the Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, absolutely saturated in erotic magical energies; and when we were settling down afterward with relaxing injections of cocaine and the masks came off, who had I been suckling but Madame Blavatsky herself! Well, I told her about my theories regarding the continent of jewels, the dinosaurs, &c., and she not only confirmed the existence of such a place, but even revealed that a primeval race of magicians not detailed in her Secret Doctrine resides there; that they jealously guard the secret of immortality and that insuperable horrors await any man who would seek to steal it from them. Then she vomited a quart of absinthe and fell asleep on the floor. My friends, I advocate for an expedition to steal the secret of immortality. Yes, Blavatsky said it would be hard-going, but have you no courage? No love of adventure? These hypernotalian mages are a primitive race hailing from the dawn of time; we, on the other hand, possess logical minds tempered in the forge of industry, and we also possess guns. We can easily overcome them with our gunpowder, our steel, and—well, it may be prudent to bring along a choleric or two. After we conquer them, we might even enlist the natives as laborers to excavate the mountain of gold. Opium, gold, oil, immortality! We have nothing to fear from melting glaciers, and the world to gain. Sally forth, countrymen! Adventure awaits!  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Points in Case. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment