Melborp

                Parents and students are stocking up on note paper, notebooks, glitter, glue and goodness knows what else in preparation for the start of a new school year next month. I don’t recall such a mass purchase-a-thon when I was a kid. Back in the dark ages all we had to buy was notebooks, paper and a few pens. Looking back and comparing all the extras kids in even the most fiscally strapped schools today have with what I had, one can only wonder how I learned anything at all.

                Here was my school day for eight years. Lining up in silence outside and entering the school in subdued rows (kind of like prisoners going to the chain gang.) Lessons in one classroom with one teacher until lunch – which we brown bagged and ate at our desks. That’s right – no cafeteria. No library for that matter, unless you called the bookcases in some of the classrooms a library. Then we ran around outside on the theory we needed exercise. You guessed it – no gym either. Back to more classes in the same room with the same teacher, followed by about three hours of homework it was worth your life not to complete. Eight years of that. Kind of builds up a high level of tolerance in a person, doesn’t it? 

                That would constitute an academic problem of giant proportion today but a funny thing happened on the way to blessed release, uhmm, “graduation.”

 I learned to learn. How to teach myself was a life lesson I figured out pretty much on my own because no teacher ever attempted to make learning fun or interesting. They just scared me to death and piled on the assignments. So maybe that eight year sentence to academic hell wasn’t a problem after all but a non-problem, a “melborp” (problem spelled backward), because a surprisingly good outcome came from a bad situation.

 

What a Name!

                In one of the Big Bang episodes, Sheldon Cooper acquired a bunch of cats when what passes for his love life hit a bump in the road.  As he explained to his flabbergasted mother, the “bunch” of cats is more correctly called a “Clowder” or a “Glare.”

                 Who knew?

                That got me wondering what other strange names we attach to animals based on their species, age or sex. Turning to the internet, here’s a sampling of some of the really weird attributions.

A congregation of alligators

A raft of Auks

A cete of badgers

A cloud of bats

A sleuth of bears

A sute of bloodhounds

A wake of Buzzards

A peep of chickens

A lap of Cod

 A bed of clams

A quiver of cobras

A bask of crocodiles

A convocation or aerie of eagles

A leash of fox

A tower of giraffes

A cackle of hyenas

A crash of rhinos

Just to name a few, but my favorite is:  a  Murder of Crows  - It makes me think of  Edgar Allan Poe.

Three Muskateers of Medicine



                This bad boy is called a Kelly Clamp and I encountered it for the first time during my operating room rotation as a student nurse. It’s one of many instruments used during surgery, especially useful for using or removing sponges from ...well, never mind.  Imagine my surprise when, following Hubby as he scoured every corner of his favorite tool and hardware store one day, I saw old Kelly sitting on a shelf with a price tag of only a few dollars. How did he escape the operating room? I nabbed him right away.

                So far, he’s proved terrific for digging out the lint that hides deep in the filter area of my dryer. Clamp a cloth or sponge in his long teeth and you can reach just about anything that needs cleaning. He’s even recently proved useful for getting socks on when one can’t reach their toes because of injury.

                There are other medical items or terms that have particular surnames as well as Kelly clamp. There’s the Foley catheter designed to remain in the bladder for more than a day. Lest we leap to the conclusion the Irish (Kelly and Foley) have a lock on medical engineering, there’s a position named Trendelenburg in which the patient’s head is lowered and the feet are raised. It is used to prevent shock by keeping blood flowing to the brain while blood pressure drops due to hemorrhage.  I heard a physician remark that whoever Trendelenburg was, he gets more famous every time a doctor shouts “Trendelenburg position!” He sounded almost jealous.

                So there’s the Three Musketeers of the medical world. Remember Trenedlenburg in case you need to use it, grab Kelly if you can and I hope you don’t need Foley.

               





Open Mouth Insert Foot

                It seems Paula Deen reaped the whirlwind with one powerful word uttered years ago. Let’s be honest. How many times have you wished you could grab words that flew out of your mouth and stuff them back, way down inside, never to see the light of day? As Paula has spoken tearfully about her moment of folly, people who must be perfectly insightful saints have said Paula “just doesn’t get it.”

                What’s not to get? Words can hurt as well as soothe, incite as well as quell, express love or shower hate. We even have laws against hate speech, but be careful of your definition of hate speech. Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric would fall under that definition but would you believe a lower court decided the verses someone quoted from the Bible was hate speech because the verses spoke against the activities of a group of people?

                Supposedly we have freedom of speech in America. They can’t throw you in jail for saying something against the latest zeitgeist, against the latest politically correct flavor of the month. But people and businesses can shun you, fire you, or cancel contracts with you. This is not freedom of speech! The government does not have to squash us; we the people, influenced by the government, will do it instead. 

               What is lost when a man or woman becomes persona non grata because they uttered something another finds offensive? We lose the grace as a people to acknowledge that we’ve all been there, perhaps not so egregiously, but been there never the less. We lose the ability to forgive even when we are hurting. And sometimes we need to acknowledge the fact that somewhere, sometime, someone will say something that deeply offends us. That’s the price of living in a free society.

What happens when we are so fearful of offending anyone that we bury our thoughts, insights and discoveries? We will eventually be afraid to speak the truth with love, to speak against the majority (IRS investigation, anyone?) and declare the Emperor has no clothes and is stark naked.

Personally, I think the old boy is “starkers” now.  So sue me.