This past Saturday morning my wife and I had a rare opportunity to go on a date. Just what do you do on a Saturday morning date? What romantic interest can you share in a few stolen hours together? Well the answer to that just may depend on whether or not your wife is a nurse.
Being married to a nurse can be a trip. We may all be sitting around together at dinner when she begins to describe some wound she saw that day in graphic detail. TIME OUT! Way too much detail! Please dial it back a bit. She looks across the table and grins innocently like she just shared about the sunset while the rest of us look at our plates and suddenly realize we are no longer hungry.
So back to Saturday morning. My wife wanted to go see the exhibit of bodies preserved in various poses for all the world to see. It is called: Our Bodies. The Universe Within. You can look it up at http://www.whitakercenter.org/Bodies/index.asp. We would see twelve bodies in different sporting poses and various states of dissection, as well as, too numerous to count, body parts.
Well I was dubious. But, ever the loving husband, off we went. We arrived and Sue was getting more and more excited while I was becoming more convinced this would not be as romantic a getaway as say going out for a leisurely breakfast or a slow walk in a park.
I hoped it was not as bad as I imagined it was going to be. Sue was fascinated beyond belief. We looked at bodies (mostly without skin) with exposed gall bladders, livers, muscles, hearts, lungs, skeletons, brains and just about everything else. These bodies were laid open in every way imaginable. I saw inside body cavities that were just not meant to be shared with others. There were spinal cords, nerves bundles, muscles, and vertebrae all over the place. The nurse part of our family could not have been more pleased (unless perhaps I had totally shared her fascination), but I was feeling more and more ready to be out of there.
While the science of dissection, and the state of preservation was amazing; here I was looking at someone’s mom or brother or daughter and seeing their insides. Try as I might, I simply could not think of these bodies as specimens. While Sue was in awe of the intricacies of the body, I was feeling guilty for examining someone’s insides when we hadn’t even been introduced yet. I imagined what might happen if we were there when the last trump sounded and they returned to life while someone was looking at their liver. Man that’s just not right!
As we neared the end of the exhibit I heaved a sigh of relief as I spied the gift shop. Sue asked me if she could go back for a while, which was fine by me. I just needed to get out of there. So while she went in for another round I escaped into the relative safety of a kid’s exhibit comparing the body to machines.
Next time we get the opportunity for a Saturday morning date, I think I might set the agenda.
Peace,
Leon
