If someone offered you ten thousand dollars to let them touch you on the eyeball without you blinking, you would never collect the money. At the very last moment, Nature would force you to blink your eye. Nature will protect her own.
--Dick Gregory
Showing posts with label biology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biology. Show all posts
Saturday, May 11, 2019
Quips and Quotations (Involuntary Response to a Stimulus Edition)
If someone offered you ten thousand dollars to let them touch you on the eyeball without you blinking, you would never collect the money. At the very last moment, Nature would force you to blink your eye. Nature will protect her own.
--Dick Gregory
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Blog Vérité: Missing a Beat
My lack of medical expertise can be so embarrassing at times.
Some twenty years ago when I was working in a fast-food joint, I was sitting in the break room with an attractive young woman--she was about 19 or 20--who by all appearances seemed to be in perfect health.
She had just inserted a straw into her soft-drink and was about to take a sip, when she suddenly said, "Oops, almost forgot to take my pills."
From out of her purse she produced a little bottle of prescription pills, shook two of the minuscule tablets onto her palm, popped them into her mouth, and then proceeded with her previously postponed sip.
Afterwards, she smiled at me and said, "Good thing I remembered."
Since she had initiated the topic, I didn't feel it was too nosy to ask, "What are the pills for?"
"I was born with half a heart."
"Half a heart?!"
"Uh, huh."
"So you have only two ventricles?"
"I don't know what you mean"
"A heart has four ventricles."
Had I access to both a computer and the Internet in that break room of two decades ago, or just a much better memory of my high school biology class, I could have told her that the heart actually has four chambers. But only two (right and left) are called ventricles. These pump blood out of the heart. The other two chambers (right and left) are called the atria, which is plural for atrium. The atriums, I mean atria, holds the blood coming into the heart for a moment, before releasing it into the right and left ventricles at just the right moment.
Instead, I told her the heart has four ventricles.
"I have half of whatever I'm supposed to have," she replied.
"Two ventricles," I said, confidentially.
A silence hung over the break room.
I broke the silence. "Must be hard to have only half a heart."
"Not as long as I take my pills."
"What happens if you don't take them?"
She laughed, hit me in the arm, and said, "I'll have a heart attack, silly!"
Of course. How embarrassing.
But imagine how much more embarrassing had she found out I was wrong about the ventricles.
Some twenty years ago when I was working in a fast-food joint, I was sitting in the break room with an attractive young woman--she was about 19 or 20--who by all appearances seemed to be in perfect health.
She had just inserted a straw into her soft-drink and was about to take a sip, when she suddenly said, "Oops, almost forgot to take my pills."
From out of her purse she produced a little bottle of prescription pills, shook two of the minuscule tablets onto her palm, popped them into her mouth, and then proceeded with her previously postponed sip.
Afterwards, she smiled at me and said, "Good thing I remembered."
Since she had initiated the topic, I didn't feel it was too nosy to ask, "What are the pills for?"
"I was born with half a heart."
"Half a heart?!"
"Uh, huh."
"So you have only two ventricles?"
"I don't know what you mean"
"A heart has four ventricles."
Had I access to both a computer and the Internet in that break room of two decades ago, or just a much better memory of my high school biology class, I could have told her that the heart actually has four chambers. But only two (right and left) are called ventricles. These pump blood out of the heart. The other two chambers (right and left) are called the atria, which is plural for atrium. The atriums, I mean atria, holds the blood coming into the heart for a moment, before releasing it into the right and left ventricles at just the right moment.
Instead, I told her the heart has four ventricles.
"I have half of whatever I'm supposed to have," she replied.
"Two ventricles," I said, confidentially.
A silence hung over the break room.
I broke the silence. "Must be hard to have only half a heart."
"Not as long as I take my pills."
"What happens if you don't take them?"
She laughed, hit me in the arm, and said, "I'll have a heart attack, silly!"
Of course. How embarrassing.
But imagine how much more embarrassing had she found out I was wrong about the ventricles.
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