My Home Among The Hills

I was reading my friend Granny Sue’s blog the other day and she had a great poem about coffee and tea.  I drank a little coffee in college and now and then afterwards but never was I much of a fan of tea.  It was not something I could even choke down.  I am not sure what really got us started but Emily and I have been drinking a cup of English breakfast tea every evening the last month or so.  I have really our tea and we both really look forward to our new tradition.  I sort of feel all grown up and stuff.  Grownups drink tea in the evenings and grownups talk about important things while they drink their tea, right?

Has anyone else ever noticed that adults are really just old kids?  I surely do not feel any more mature or any more prepared to be an adult than I did when I was, oh…13 or so.  It’s sort of a funny realization I guess.  When I was a kid, I always held adults in high esteem…like it was a special privilege to make it to adulthood.  Surely adults got a special membership card or access to a secret library of adultiness.  Surely adults must be some special sort of creature, right?  I mean, adults drink tea.

In my last post, I mentioned that I had performed surgery.  It’s a somewhat interesting tale that may make you wonder about me a little more than you already do.  Ok, so where to start?  I entered college pretty sure of myself.  I wanted a job that made great money and was intellectual and all that crap that high school seniors think is important.  I also had no interest whatsoever in dating or romance or ever having a girlfriend, so electrical engineering seemed right up my alley.

Within weeks, it was clear to me I had no idea what college was all about though.  I didn’t want to be an engineer and I didn’t mind the idea of a date now and then.  The first semester passed (and I shall speak no more of it here) and I knew I did not want to be an electrical engineer.

I met Emily during the first week of an honors philosophy class we both were taking (I also learned I did not want to be a philosopher).  We weren’t anything but acquaintances at that point.  I was minding my own business in the library during finals week, probably studying for that very class, when Emily and her friend came over and sat down.  Emily declared that I had studied enough and invited me to her dorm room for some hot chocolate.  I didn’t like hot chocolate but she was far too cute to let a little hot chocolate come between us.  It took 6 months of drinking hot chocolate before I finally worked up enough courage to kiss her.  Well before that, however, I knew I wanted to hang out with her more…so I decided to become a psychology major!  Yeah, if you know me, you know I don’t like people that much…not a smart move.  Anyhow, we graduated with degrees in psychology and prepared for graduate school.

We ended up at Western Kentucky University (we called it Western but they frown on that now) where I studied retinal physiology of zebrafish.  The neuroscience program was technically a part of the experimental psychology program which was technically a part of the  regular psychology program so I was legit.  I wrote software to do the data analysis and drive the data collection mechanisms which we used to study fish eyes.

I really thought I liked that a lot so after finishing at Western, we decided to head to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.  I enrolled in the PhD program in neuroscience at Vanderbilt where I studied brain anatomy and physiology in rhesus monkeys (and other creatures to a lesser extent).  The work I was doing was pretty sexy and unusual at the time.  Most anatomy and physiology work requires a short future for the animals involved.  They are always treated humanely at Vanderbilt, but it required an extreme commitment from the animal subjects.  My lab, however, was unusual in that we did surgeries to implant sensors in the monkeys’ brains and then woke them back up and did various tasks on which we had trained them.  They had long and nearly normal (lab animal) lives .  While they did their tasks, we could collect data from the sensors.  Truly, it was amazing work!

As I mentioned, the sensors were implanted in the brains (and eyes…I did not mention that) of the monkeys.  As students, part of our training was learning how to do both types of surgeries on the animals.  We used a sterile, human-grade operating room with human-grade tools and all of the “stuff” a surgeon would use on people if ever there was a need to put eye and brain sensors in a human (remind me…there is another story there).  Monkeys, of course, have many similarities to humans so it truly was an amazing experience but incredibly terrifying.  Every surgery we did was so stressful and I didn’t even have to worry about a human life or any sort of litigation.  Ok, I digress.

I eventually decided I did not like monkeys any more than I liked people so I ended up leaving Vanderbilt and monkey research.  I did like writing the computer software that we used at Western and Vanderbilt to collect data and drive the machinery.  Upon leaving Vanderbilt, I enrolled at Middle Tennessee State University where I earned a masters degree in computer science.  I am much better suited to this gig…I get computers and they get me.  It really is where I needed to end up, even if it was through a roundabout path.  The coolest part is I still get to spend lots of time with Emily!

I was tucking Abigail into bed last night and reminded her that she could sleep in and enjoy her morning.  She remembered that it was Martin Luther King, Jr day.  She asked, “Jr means there was someone else with that name.  Who was that?”  I told her what I knew about her father and how MLK Jr was also a Southern black preacher (like his father) who led a movement to gain civil rights for black people 50-60 years ago.  We talked about Rosa Parks on the bus in Alabama and how brave she was to remain seated in her seat.  We talked about how badly some white people treated black people, abusing or killing them for a stray look or a misstep or just for fun.  I think she knew a lot of the information we discussed but we talked pretty plainly about how important it is to celebrate the bravery of the white and black pioneers of the Civil Rights movement.

I love where I grew up and I am proud to have come from a small town.  It’s funny though…we were monocolor and in some ways were so incredibly far apart away from race issues.  There was no diversity though so it was not an issue.  While I never saw race riots or first-hand discrimination or anything even close, I heard plenty of racial slurs and stereotypes and if anyone had ever even seen a person of color, it might have been different.  I didn’t really think much of it at the time as I knew not a single non-white person until I was in high school.  But for Isaac and Abigail, they don’t even comprehend racism.  That is not to say that it does not exist today, but I am so thankful that in their lives and experiences in their school, it seems to be absent.  I truly think that they no more understand hating someone for the color of their skin than hating someone because they are left handed or blonde.

As Abigail and I were finishing our conversation, she said, “Thanks Dad for answering all of my questions.”  (Yes, she said it just like that)  Thinking ahead to her preteen years, I assured her that she could always ask me any question and she would never be in trouble for curiosity.  ”Well Dad, there is one more thing then…I have always wondered how cars work…”