Auntie Jillian, Judge Alex, and How Plans Change

This post was originally about something entirely different than its eventual topic. I'll tackle the other topic soon, as the introduction was already written. Instead of telling you about Stephanie March - a talented actress who portrayed (and still portrays, I think although I rarely have time to watch) an ADA and/or bureau chief  on Law and Order SVU, I'll instead write about what my brother says is my absolute favorite topic on which to write or to speak: ME! Anytime I seem to him to be too full of myself, my brother announces, "Let's all sing another round of the "Alexis Theme Song" (sung to the tune of Barney's opening theme: "I love MEEEE! You love MEEE! Everyone loves  MEEE,  MEEE, MEEE!" etc. You get the point. My brother thinks my ego is excessively large, and i am perhaps abit self-obsessed.

As a very young child, I had a bit of an obsession with the guy who played Steve on Blue's clues. I didn't even know if his real name was Steve or not. That's how young I was. Judge Alex Ferrer was probably my closest thing to an obsession after Steve. At first I wanted to be adopted by Judge Alex and his wife and to be rescued from what I perceived as the abusive home situation in which I was entrenched. Then, as I began to see reality a bit more clearly, I just wanted to become Judge Alex, or at least the female equivalent of him. Television fame - or even fame in any form -- was not my aim. Rather, my goal was simply a matter of wanting to fight for truth, justice, and the American way. I lamented that fact that I was not of Cuban descent. I wanted to go to a really good law school. From there, I wanted to be an assistant district attorney, which is something Judge Ferrer never did, but still I thought it was the best way for me to reach my ultimate objective, and it had worked well enough for The Judge  Honorable Marilyn Milian (also of Cuban extraction), so it seemed like a viable plan.

Incidentally, I now no longer totally idolize Judge Ferrer, I don't worship him as I did as a young teen. Instead, I see him as a real person with normal strengths and weaknesses - far more strengths than weaknesses, if it matters - who is a truly good, kind, and moral person. He is a good husband and father, which, in today's crazy world, is one of the most honorable characteristics a man can possess. He married a good woman when he was young and was smart enough to stick with her through the inevitable tough times of any marriage. He raised children of whom he and his wife can be proud. One of them just graduated from law school today. He never forgot his humble roots, having immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba as an infant, with his family having left behind a comfortable lifestyle and virtually everything they owned, and speaks often of his experience as a young immigrant assimilating into a new and very different culture. He's the sole survivor of his parents'  three sons, and as such has assumed the responsibility of assisting his aging parents. Judge Ferrer has raised awareness of the issue of bullying in our schools and elsewhere, and is also taking on corporations who commit unethical practices that harm all of us, in many cases without our knowledge of the nefarious corporate practices.  Judge Ferrer is someone I admire  immensely, and once the craziness of medical school, internship, and residency are history, I will strive to someday accomplish a fraction of the good in the world that he is doing..

Judge Ferrer is someone I also consider a friend -- one on whom I can call for advice or even just a kind word of encouragement when I'm in need of it. He doesn't have to be so nice to a complete nobody such as myself. He just does. It's certainly not because of my looks. If such were the case, he'd be asking me for the phone numbers of my friends, some of whom are bona fide knockouts. I'm not the only average citizen to whom he extends such kindness, He's a great man who gives freely of himself. If half of the world's celebrities, or even of the world's average citizens, were as giving of themselves as is Judge Ferrer, the world would be a much better planet on which to live.

Back to my law career that never happened . . .From the ADA's side of the courtroom,  I had hoped to impress enough politicians that I might eventually be appointed to a position on the bench in some capacity. I could, obviously, have run for election, but I'm not sure it would have been a great route to a judgeship for me. Something about being a tiny blonde girl  with a high-pitched voice who doesn't look her age and probably won't until she's fifty wouldn't seem to inspire confidence in the masses when it came time to cast one's vote for a judge, and my preference wouldn't be to wait until the age of fifty before attaining the rank of judge. (Once I had the position and had done a decent job, relection wasn't quite such a daunting prospect to me.) Neither Alex Ferrer nor Marilyn Milian waited so long. Impressing a few politicians seemed like a surer bet.  Meanwhile, I could put away hordes of heinous.criminals. I would have to look over my shoulder constantly because of the friends and relatives of the gang members and other bad guys I'd convicted, but that would be just part of the excitement of the lifestyle.

My ambition to practice law was all the more heightened by my Aunt Jillian's choice of law as a profession. Aunt Jillian is only seven years older than I, and has always been my real-life role model. I suspect if she had become either a nun or a prostitute I would have seriously considered doing the same even though I haven't the slightest inclination toward a vocation of either sort. She attended J. Ruben Clark School of Law in Provo, Utah (affiliated with Brigham Young University) because she had done her undergraduate work there and because her husband was attending the University of Utah School of Medicine thirty or so miles up the freeway. Aunt Jillian did well in her law studies, just as she has done well at virtually everything she has ever attempted to do. She had considered medical school, but because of issues with her health, she ultimately decided that law school would be a more reasonable course of study or her.

I don't know if she has regrets about her decision to forego medicine in favor of law -- I certainly hope she doesn't --  but her early legal career showed considerable promise. She moved from the public defender's office to a position as an assistant district attorney to private practice to doing the one thing that really mattered to her most, which was to raise children. She is in her final trimester with her second and final child. (Having children puts more stress on her body than it does on the body of the average expectant mother, and she's doing very well to be able to produce two healthy children, and signs point to her being able to do just that, though we're all still keeping our fingers crossed and keeping her and the baby in our prayers.) .Jillian's older child - a little boy named Andrew, who just reached six months of age, is my Godchild and is the absolute light of my life. I don't think anyone in the world loves him more than I do except, perhaps, his parents.Andrew's little sister will be born at around thirty-five or thirty-six weeks of gestation, which is as long as she can carry a baby before going back onto her regular medication for cystic fibrosis. This will make Andrew between eight and nine months old when his baby sister is born. My mom says non-twin siblings born less than a year apart are known as Irish twins. The babies are half Cuban, with the remaining half being a mixture of Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, so there's not a drop of Irish in the mixture, but they're about as close in age as non-twin siblings can be. I gave up a teaching job this summer (I had an offer to teach calculus for summer school) in large part so that I could spend as much time with the babies as possible. There are lots of people to help, so it's not as though the family is in great need of my assistance, but it's what I want to do with my summer. Jillian and my Uncle Scott will probably get so sick of me that they'll kick me out of their house, but until then, I'm staking my claim and hanging out there.

Aunt Jillian still does paperwork for the legal firm in which she is a partner (it was a new firm, and they really needed capital, which she could offer, so she became an instant partner). When her children are in school, she says she'll try a few cases a year. Meanwhile, she'll handle paperwork and draft opening  statements and closing arguments for other attorneys in the firm when she has time.

I've worked with Aunt Jillian as a paralegal (no certification is required in order to be a paralegal here; if the attorney paying you is satisfied with the job one is doing and the "paralegal" does nothing to offend the judge, he or she has the job). I can shuffle papers with the best of them and am a relatively quick study with a bit of clairvoyance in terms of anticipating what document Aunt Jillian needs before she asks for it, plus I'm a meticulous note-taker. She says anytime I want to take a break from my career as a med school student or doctor, I can work for her if she's working. Right now she's having too much fun with her baby to even think about stepping into a courtroom.

Working with Aunt Jillian gave me an up-close-and-personal look at the practice of law in the courtroom. It's neither as glamorous nor as exciting as what one typically sees in any of the Law & Order genres. Even in the most efficiently-run courtroom, a tremendous amount or time is spent on technicalities. Jurors are late for trials. Motions are made and must be ruled upon, however ridiculous they may appear. Witnesses become emotional or ill, and everything stops while they compose themselves or finish hurling. Questioning involving s mindless and inconsequential matter can go on for what seems like forever. A good judge can minimize the repetition, but the accused must have a fair trial, and if that sometimes involves the belaboring of a point ad nauseum, that's the way it has to be.

And that's just the courtroom side of the law -- the exciting part. Most of a lawyer's hours are not spent in court. Most of it is buried in paperwork, negotiations, consultations (often for which the pay is often a big fat nothing), drafting of pre-trial motions or responding to such, conferencing with clients either by telephone or in person, trying to reason with people who are not all that reasonable, and attempting to console clients or families when things don't go the way they had hoped. But mostly it's paperwork, paperwork, and even more paperwork. And that's if you're working in criminal law. In civil law, God only knows how much worse it might be. For the most part, there's  not quite so much looking over your shoulder at someone who wishes in the worst way to off you as an act of revenge, but it's still not beyond possibility. Family law in particular can be ugly in that regard.  Where huge sums of money are involved, too, emotions run high, and people who might otherwise behave more rationally can lose sensibility. No profession is 100% safe, and the legal profession is probably less safe than most.

The safety factor is minor in the grand scheme of whether or not to ultimately choose to go into the legal profession. one must have a passion for it in order to be either successful or happy. It is going to be tedious more often than not. An attorney had best be a person who doesn't mind reading even when the reading material is something that could put a person to sleep who hasn't slept for days, and one must read with extreme attention to detail and with level 20.0 comprehension at the very lowest. (That's as in beginning first grade being 1.0, mid-second grade being 2.6, etc.). Unwieldy stacks of written material will appear on an attorney's desk on a regular basis. Unless an attorney has a paralegal he can trust beyond question [and it typically takes years to develop such trust in an employee] the reading needs to be done by the attorney himself or herself. The buck stops with the attorney. One simple conjunction -- an and versus an or-- can drastically alter the bottom line of a settlement. It's all in the details.

And  one must write with the same level of precision that is expected in one's reading. A good legal secretary or paralegal can catch the obvious errors, but the more subtle nuances may only be understood by the attorney. As an attorney develops a working relationship with a paralegal, he or she may find that the paralegal is roughly as competent at such things as is the paralegal, but in such cases, if the paralegal is really sharp, he or she will complete law school and cease to work for a paralegal's wages. And in spite of any paralegal's qualifications, the ultimate responsibility will always fall upon the attorney. He or she will be sued if a client is screwed over by a misplaced comma or other seemingly inconsequential misuse of the English language that might have earned a single  mark of a red pen in a university English course but could cost thousands or tens of thousands if an attorney botches a legal settlement on behalf of a client. (These sorts of things are usually read multiple times by more than one reader with expertise in  going over such material; such a grievous error  isn't an everyday occurrence, but they do happen.)

Though it sometimes doesn't seem to be the case with my haphazard typing, usually after I've put ointment into my overly dry eyes, I am able to write with precision when I take the time to do so. I read carefully as well. I have the ability to pay attention to detail, to think quickly, and to draft responses on the spur of the moment. What I do not have, and may not have at any time in the foreseeable future, is a commanding presence and a powerful voice. I'm a skinny, pale little girl whose voice sounds even younger than I look. (I only sound authoritative if I have a cold.) Were I to pursue law as a career, I would surely need to have speech therapy in effort to add depth and resonance my voice, and chances are that the world's most talented speech pathologist would have only marginal success in improving my voice. In terms of vocal chords, you basically get what you're born with. You can damage them but you probably cannot make them much better.. Relaxation techniques can remove some of the strident sound my voice possesses, but there's a limit to how relaxed I can or should be on the job. I can't down a pint of bourbon before work every day.

What I do have working in my favor, though, is that I've always had a knack for math and science. My dad mostly kept his mouth shut throughout the time it was assumed I would study law because he knew that I was likely to do the opposite of whatever he suggested, although he did recommend several math and science courses as electives under the guise that it would supposedly give me an advantage in certain specialty branches of law. I listened to his advice and took the courses. Then, midway through my undergrad studies, Dad finally came right out and said that it was a waste of mathematical and scientific strength for me to go to law school. I don't know if he honestly believed the part about it being a supposed waste of ability; I think he just believe I would totally suck as a trial lawyer. Regardless, at least I had that strength on which to fall since it didn't appear that law school would be the best of options. I would have gotten into at least some  law school (my GPA and LSAT scores were strong), and I would have done reasonably well in law school, but I would have totally stunk up the joint as a trial lawyer, and chances are that any attention I got from any politician would have been because of my high and squeaky voice and little-girl-dressed in-her-mom's clothing appearance, and not because of my Solomon-like rulings and any presumed laser-like precision with which I ran the prosecution of my cases,

It's a family thing that we all try to obtain degrees in music even though we don't necessarily intend to pursue careers in the field. Both of my parents have music performance undergrad degrees in addition to their REAL degrees. Matthew didn't have time to get one because he played Division I baseball and finished school in three years. As critical as i can be of Matthew, even I will admit that it's asking a lot of someone to complete a double major under such circumstances. I was already on track to complete my piano performance major, but because I had switched majors from English to biochemistry and didn't have quite as many broad science  courses as would have been ideal for a medical school applicant, my counselor decided it would be a wonderful idea for me to tack on a violin performance  major to my already heavy load, (The word on the street is that nearly all science majors with high GPAs and MCAT scores who are also violin performance majors are usually accepted into the medical schools of their first-choice.) Since I was slated to finish in three years  (I had taken tons of AP courses in high school. I would have finished high school in three years except that A) my parents didn't want me leaving for college at 15 and B) I took enough AP course to equal more than a year of university credits) this added a level of intensity to a final year of university that should have been spent lying on the beach while opening an occasional textbook. C'est la vie.

The violin performance add-on major might seem on the surface to have been a really good idea except for one minor glitch:  I'm not all that terrific a violinist. What I play sounds good, but my technique up to that point hadn't been something on which I devoted a great amount of time. Piano was my instrument. my mom played violin, and we always had one around, so I dabbled with it. My mom noticed that  I got a better-than-average sound out of it when I played, so she taught me the basics, but I never had formal lessons. I didn't even own my own violin until the Christmas before I graduated from high school. I played it because I enjoyed it, but there was a considerable level of technical mastery that I lacked. When the counselor came up with his brilliant idea, the workload nearly killed me, but I did it. I passed my juries easily, and the recital went without a hitch. (It's easy to perform when you're playing the pieces you choose.) I'll never know if the violin major made a difference, but I was asked to play violin at two medical school interviews including the one at the school I attend.

That's how I ended up in medical school despite starting out as an English major with pre-law aspirations. Relatively few people end up doing what they thought they would do when when they began university studies. The points to this, if there are any points to it, are  that ANY degree is better than no degree at all, to take courses early that will be useful regardless of one's major ends up being, to listen to the right people, as some  people give better adudy vice than others,  to make changes in university if one feels the strong desire to do so , as it's easier to shift courses of study while still in school than it is to do so after one has completed his or her education, and to try to maintain some sort of a balance between what you do well  and what you love to do.

I Will (Probably) Survive

what Alexis is going to look like if she doesn't soon stop using hydrocortisone cream

Seven-up and ginger ale are the best I can tolerate, and even they taste bad to me. The thought of consuming food is positively revolting. I can't watch TV because there are too many food commercials, and I can't manipulate the remote control fast enough to get them off the screen before they make me toss the cookies that i haven't even eaten.

This stomach virus nonsense positively sucks. At least my rash is improving, though. Hydrocortisone cream works miracles even if it does ultimately turn me into some sort of hermaphrodite.

Returning to the World of the Living with Surgical Scrubs That Do Not Ravage My Skin

the picture on the outside of the package; navy blue is one of the colors my dad ordered

I'm vaguely returning to the world of the living. As long as I stay in bed with my head flat on my pillow, I'm OK. When my brother called my dad to tell him that I was sick, my dad told Matthew he had to change my sheets. Matthew hates changing sheets to the extent that I change them for him at least once every week  because it gives me a serious case of the willies to think that someone in my house is sleeping on unclean sheets. Matthew changed my sheets, though, when my dad told him he had to.

My dad got here about forty-five minutes after we got home. He took a blood sample and had Matthew deliver it to the hospital lab, but it was unlikely that anything significant was wrong other than some garden-variety bug -- a bad one, but garden variety, nonetheless. My dad hooked me up to an IV for hydration. my white count was normal so there was no reason for antibiotics. He gave me good anti-nausea meds also.

Matthew had a great day. He read a bit and went over material, but he also played video games and watched TV and made himself a huge lunch with a bunch of fried onions and other similarly noxious stuff.  I put a towel under my door so the smell wouldn't make me even sicker. My dad made Matthew clean the kitchen thoroughly so the smell wouldn't continue to make me sick.

This next portion may fall under the category of "Too Much Information," but I've shared worse, so what the hell? we had to wear surgical scrubs to anatomy lab, and surgical scrubs and a lab coat to Practice of Medicine. The hospital issue garments looked stupid on me. I appeared to be wearing my parents' or older sibling's clothing. I couldn't make permanent alterations because no one gets the same scrubs two times in a row, so I had to thread elastic through the waist band every day, which was time-consuming.That was the least of my trouble in that regard, though. Something either in the fabric itself or in the detergent and disinfectant used in the hospital's laundry process caused me to break out in a horrible and itchy rash.

The rash covered a large enough surface that both my dad and my professors told me not to use hydrocortisone cream, which would be the most effective remedy, because the surface area of the rash was too great, and I would be absorbing too much in the way of steroids. someone was giving me a weekly shot of steroids, and topical Benadryl was prescribed, but my whole body under the scrubs except where covered by underwear was a disaster. I started wearing underarmour, but it was causing me to overheat. the situation was grim. i was beginning to consider a career change.

My dad came to the rescue. He ordered a dozen pairs of hypoallergenic scrubs for me. They even appear to be in a size that will fit me. He located a laundry in my neighborhood that guarantees hospital-level disinfectant that won't irritate even the most sensitive of skin. One of the sets of scrubs is pink, which I expressly requested NOT to have, but I can sleep in them or wear them around the house. i have problems with credibility and being taken seriously under the best of circumstances. showing up to lab or Practice of Medicine in pink scrubs would do little to help my reputation. At least my dad knows that female med students (or, for that matter, male med students) cannot wear the cutesy scrubs that nurses and techs in doctors' offices wear, with kitties and owls and flowers all over them.

I have to have a prescription to be allowed to wear my own scrubs, but it shouldn't be a problem. Enough of my profs have either seen my rash or have been annoyed by my scratching that they'd all be willing to sign off on it. For that matter, i think my dad can write the script.

My dad said since it's very short term, i can use hydrocortisone cream just for the weekend. after than, between extra-strength Benadryl cream and no longer wearing the scrubs that are toxic to my skin, I should be all right.

i tried really hard not to scratch too much because I did not want my skin to scar, but sometimes i couldn't resist. One of my profs told me that once my skin feels a bit better, I should use Mederma, and that will probably remove any traces of scarring.

I've been awake for thirty-five minutes, so I probably need to conk out.

Kicked Out of School

This isn't a real person barfing. Someone positioned Barbie in a barf-like pose. I'm not nearly  so glamorous when I throw up.

I was kicked out of lecture this morning for repeatedly barfing. I obviously didn't throw up in the auditorium, but one time i didn't make it to the bathroom and had to use the trash receptacle in the hallway. I'd love to think the professor was concerned about me personally, but we all know she was worried about contracting whatever it was that was making me barf. C'est la vie.

The professor initially thought that I was hung over, but a few people clued her in to the fact that such was somewhere between highly unlikely and impossible.

When I re-entered the auditorium after either my fifth or sixth barfing episode, the prof asked me if I had done the assigned reading. i told her yes. She asked if i understood everything in the material I had covered. I answered yes to that as well. She then told me to leave. My brother had to leave as well, because no one though I should drive myself because I passed out after one one my barfing episodes. The professor told Matthew to stay home as well because I shouldn't be alone, and that i should go to the health center. I didn't go to the health center because my dad is only about an hour away. Matthew called him, and he's coming. My suspicion is that the prof told Matthew to stay home because she was concerned he might be incubating whatever it is that I have and didn't want to catch it from him, either.

While my dad is here, he'll probably do my laundry, so my days as a Goth are numbered. My dad knows how to do laundry properly, so I trust him with my clothing.

I don't feel good enough to watch TV or play the piano, so I'm going to bed. I probably shouldn't have taken the time to type this post, but it temporarily distracted me from just how terrible I feel.

Matthew will bother me for awhile about the material that is being covered, but I can answer most of his questions in my sleep, and my dad will be here soon enough to answer his questions so I don't have to be bothered. 

At least it's not appendicitis, as my appendix was removed a few years ago. So was my gall bladder. I'm running out of organs that can be remove without killing me.

My corneal laceration is killing me because i felt too sick to get up during the night and put ointment in it. when my dad arrives, he'll put the ointment in my eye around the clock, so I can be as lazy as I choose to be.

I'm going to hibernate now except for the times I must get up to barf. i'm hoping my dad brings good anti-nausea drugs.

Alexis the Goth and Other Laundry Woes

This is similar to the look I've been sporting lately except that she's a bit more voluptuous than I.

Because I spent a large portion of my life from before middle school through undergrad as a semi-professional musician, I have a substantial black wardrobe. Background musicians are expected to wear black. Musicians only wear other colors when they're soloing, and sometimes even then, they wear black. I've outgrown (THANK GOD!!!) most of my middle school wardrobe, but because I'm not into form-fitting clothing for the most part, I can still wear most of the stuff i wore in high school even though I weighed 87 pounds at the very heaviset during those days. 

My expansive basic black wardrobe comes in handy usually when I'm called upon to play for a wedding, funeral, recital, or some other such event.  I've recently found another use for the black clothing, however.  There is this pesky matter, as you most likely know, called laundry. Sometimes I study so much that I find that I haven't done any laudry for a week or two or three.  That's when the  extensive black wardrobe is a rather convenient thing to own. It's clean and  doesn't smell, and it's hanging up in my closet, wrinkly-free and  ready to wear.  I  must admit that it's all I've worn this week.

What I will tell you next probably falls under the umbrella of "Too Much Information," but since I don't know most  of you personally, I'll share the information anyway. I was once in the hospital when my parents were out of the country. I had no one to do laundry for me who would do it in the matter to which I have become accustomed. My Aunt Jillian might have done it, but she was very sick -- much too sick to be doing my laundry. I could have asked my brother to do my laundry, but my brother's idea of doing laundry is to throw everything he can find into the washing machine regardless of fabric type or weight, color, or any other consideration, then pour a bit of bleach into the machine just because it's there, then turn the machine settings to "hot water" and "regular cycle," and then to throw it all into the dryer on the highest heat setting possible, and then run it through two complete drying cycles. My bras, which wouldn't have been all that large in the first place, would have fit Barbie's cousin Skipper by the time they came out of my brother's version of the wash/dry cycle. My white underwear would have been either pink or dingy gray when it came out, depending upon whether it was washed with new jeans or a crimson T-shirt. My nice lingerie would have fuzzy things stucky all over them from the terry-cloth towels my brother had washed with them. For this reason, I would sooner wear dirty clothing than trust my wardrobe to my brother's laundry methods.

The time I was in the hospital for almost three weeks when  my parents were abroad, I decided I would never again be in the situation of having to rely on my brother to do my laundry. A person really doesn't need much in the way of clothing while an inpatient in a hospital. Patients are typically expect to wear those lovely hospital gowns. Bras really aren't even all that essential, particularly for someone with a build like mine. Underwear, however, is something most of us would consider non-negotiable. As soon as I was released from the hospital. I went online to Amazon.com and ordered twenty-eight bra and undies sets.This was in addition to the ten or so sets that I already owned. I keep these undergarments  in drawer number three of whatever dresser I'm using in whatever home in which I'm living. Then if I'm inexplicably hospitalized when my parents are far away and there is no one more qualified than my brother to do my laundry, all i have to do is to give my house key to anyone or even ask my brother, and tell the person to go to my room, take at least 20 pairs of undies from my drawer, and bring them to me at the hospital. The catastrophe is  therefore averted.

How this relates to my present system is that even though I haven't done laundry for two weeks or so, I have my black wardrobe, which is clean, and my emergency stash of undies, which are also clean.

The cool guy in class, after once again acknowledging me as Cutthroat Bitch and slapping hands with me yesterday, quietly asked me if I was going Goth. I explained my laundry situation and my excess supply of basic black clothing. He just laughed. Then our professor for the day entered the room. He's young, more than  a bit nerdy, and somewhat socially awkward as well.  He looked at me and asked me out loud in front of everyone, "Alexis, have you turned Goth?"

I smiled proudly and replied, "You noticed!" The entire cohort broke into laughter, though I didn't know if they were laughing at the professor or at me. The man had no clue I was playing games with his mind. After class, he  asked me to wait for a moment to talk to him. He inquired as to my state of mental health and what it was that possessed me to dress in black. He even asked if I had felt suicidal recently. I never bothered to clue him in about my basic black musician wardrobe and my laundry situation. Sometimes I'm not a very nice person.

This weekend I'll do my laundry. Then I'll start wearing my normal clothing again. The professor will be very proud of himself, as he will take personal credit for having lured me back toward the light. What people do not know does not hurt thiem and sometimes even helps them to fell better about themselves.

Matthew, by the way, is making fun of me for failing to do my laundry. He has been talking about the extreme labor involved in doing laundry in today's world. "You have to pump the water, then heat it, and make your own soap from lye," he commented. "Then you have to either scrub the clothes on one of those boards or put it through one of those roller things (I think he meant a ringer) to squeeze all the water out. I can see why it's so much trouble for you to do your laundry." He can laugh all he wants, but my basic black wardrobe still looks better than his formerly white shirts that are now pinkish-purplish-grayish-indigo thanks to the care with which he sorts colors while doing his laundry.

This is similar to the outfit I'll wear tomorrow, although it won't look quite like that on me.

The nerdy professor and Alexis before my transformation to  Gothic.

Standard English Usage Nazis

I enjoy hearing the English language spoken properly and seeing it written correctly as much as does the next person. I am not, however, the world's finest typist, which leads to occasional typographical errors on my part.

A person on another site was highly critical of my writing. I admit that I can write quite informally here. Often I type after having put ointment in my eyes, and I don't type by touch all that well, which can lead to typographical errors. I'm careless when leaving other messages at other sites for the same reasons. blurry eyes combined with poor touch-typing skills lend themselves to typographical errors..

The person in question was commenting about my writing here, though, and was criticizing my sentence structure and  use of vocabulary, among other things. I wonder what the person would think if he or she knew that I received the highest possibles scores on both the writing portion of the SAT and on the same section of the MCAT. I didn't bother telling the person. Such knowledge would only further solidify in the person's mind that the youth of the world are going down the tubes at a more rapid rate than he or she previously had considered possible. I did mention being in medical school. I'm sure the person hopes never to be under my care in a medical setting. He or she probably thinks I would mis-write something on a prescription pad  and inadvertently kill him or her.

My detractor would actually be in a much more problematic mental state  if she were taken to an emergency room where my father was on duty. He knows  emergency medicine and trauma care quite thoroughly, and he can even spell, but his handwriting is so atrocious that it takes someone skilled in translating hieroglyphics to be able to understand his prescriptions. I can understand them because I've been reading his writing since i was two years old, but not all pharmacists and pharmacy techs are so well-versed in reading the writings of those who scrawl in the manner of three-year-olds.

A recent advancement that has helped the patients my father sees in the E.R is the use of email and fax machines to send many prescriptions of non-controlled substances. My father can type reasonably well, especially considering how poorly he prints and writes. Level I and Level II controlled substances, however, must have hard copies of prescriptions delivered to pharmacies by patients, Some hospitals prit the presciptions out on computers after doctors have typed the information into the computers. in some instances, however, the computers are not avaiable or are not operating, in which case my fdad has to write out the rescription old-style. in such a case, my father can expect to receive a phone call from the pharmacy clarifying his prescription. This is better than killing the patient with incorrect prescriptions or dosages, but it results in a tremendous loss of time for my father.

i'm digressing, however. a lady on a message board I seldom visit believes my writing style is unbelievable substandard. I could either cry about it or admit that I';m human and make typograhical errors on occasion, but conclude that the person who made the criticism of me is probably even stupider than I am. Either way, life goes on.

Slamming Mormonism or Otherwise: a New Creative Venture for Me

Imagine the strains of "Inagoddadavida" blasting from the bell of The Angel Moroni's horn. It gives a whole new perspective to the supposed end of times.

While it's the very last thing in the world I have time for, I'm making a brief forage into the word of writing fiction. Midterms are almost upon me, and I really shouldn't be staying awake at night typing silly works of pseudo-literature, but it's often what I want to do. My dad says that's the way things are. The busier a person is with the things he or she absolutely must do, like studying medical school texts, memorizing flashcards with medical  acronyms, and other such essentials of my life as a medical school student, the more a person's mind's creative juices flow. If a person ever wants to do anything creative, as in perhaps paint, write, compose, or whatever, the desire or inspiration will come when he or she is most likely  swamped with non-negotiable things in his or her life. My dad says either you carve out a bit of time for the creative outlet or you don't, but you keep in mind what is really important and what are your priorities, and you don't risk your grades in medical school fr a mere hobby unless you're more seriously considering becoming a full-time writer than a doctor.

For the record, I have no intention whatsoever of giving up my future medical career to write The Great American Novel, or even to write The Mediocre American Novel. Writing for me will never be much more than a diversion or a creative outlet.  All medicine and no creativity whatsoever, be it music or writing, would make Alexis a very dull person and probably a lousy physician or surgeon as well. Good doctors need more than a single dimension to their lives.

I usually consider my dad  full of shit, but in this particular regard, he's been there before me, so he has at least a bit of credibility. Studying comes first. After I've studied until I can study no more, if I still feel the urge to write before I sleep, I will do so.

I'll share with my readers when there is something worth sharing. I can say that what I have written so far is somewhat centered around Mormonism but that it doesn't treat the topic all that sympathetically. I'm really not sure where I'm going with this venture. I may be truly going on a bender and may end up out in left field somewhere. The end could be a short story, a collection of short stories with related characters appearing result in each others' stories,  a novel, or a collection of drivel so pathetic that I'm too embarrassed to show anyone, although I will really try to share if there's any way I can do so while maintaining even a shred of dignity. I'm not sure where it's going. All I'm really sure about is that if I release it in any form, at least half of my relatives will hate me even more than they already do. That's life as I've always known it, though.

I'm open to any words of wisdom (except for THE Word of Wisdom that Mormons refer to as such; I'm not all that open to hearing any more about THAT) from anyone who chooses to share them, Whether it's about plot lines, technique, best times for writing, how much  to share or to give of oneself in one's writing, and other various and sundry topics, please give me advice. I need it.

And please help me to remember that I'm a medical student, not an author. This writing thing is a mere diversion. Someday I may merge the two vocations/avocations of my life, and I may come up with a work of literature related to the study of medicine or featuring a med school student or doctor as a main character, but at this point I'm too much of an neophyte in the field of medicine to even consider such a prospect.

Jesus Wants Me for a Zombie

I probably should be studying rather than posting, but as far as studying goes, there comes a time when either enough is enough or it is time to find a new course of study, I'm hoping that enough truly is enough where my studying is concerned, as I really don't want to find another course of study.

Tonight I studied independently. I did run a few things by my brother, and I consulted with my pal just around the corner from me who is an intern. I think I've committed to memory everything I can memorize up to this point. I've even memorized a few things I don't fully understand because they haven't come up yet in lecture.  I assume that it will all come together for me when it's discussed in lecture, or maybe even before. One other time I memorized a huge section of text that I didn't understand. Two nights later I had a dream about it, and then it was all perfectly clear. As I see it, my dreams work against me more often than they should, so if a dream works in my favor once in a great while, It's only fair. The only problem with dreaming about text that I've memorized is that I wake up not rested in the least. When one spends her sleeping hours working out the vagaries of medical science, one cannot expect to get quality sleep.

Midterms are coming up next week. I'll also be able to run next week. Running should help me burn off nervous energy related to midterms. i don't actually have that much nervous energy related to midterms, though. I just want to run. Testing is less work for me than lecture. with lecture, I always worry about whether or not I missed anything. /with tests, its simply a matter or regurgitating what is known and synthesizing a bit from what has been learned. It's actually much less stressful than dealing with lecture. not everyone agrees with me about this, but it's my personal philosophy and I'm sticking to it.

It's so nice to slip into a bathtub r shower without the hassle of triple-wrapping my leg in garbage bags. I'm still using my handicapped placard because I cannot yet ride my bike, and if I park in general parking, I'll be handicapped by the time I walk the distance from the outer limits of student parking to the medical science building. If it matters. my orthopedist told me to continue to use the placard until next week. At that point, I'll send it back. I'm not a total reprobate.

In just over another month, final exams will be well underway. Then shortly thereafter, my final summer vacation as I've come to know it will have begun. Maybe I should have gone to law school. I would have had one more summer vacation had I chosen law as a course of study. C'est la vie. If I earn enough money, I can eventually afford to take two to three months off every year if that's what I really want to do. It's those next few years of getting to that point that are likely to kill me before I get there, though.  

The Worst Teacher in History

These kids are a bit larger than  we were, but the overall essence is the same.

Last night's diatribe was really just a prelude to tonight's anti-tribute to someone who is arguably the worst teacher in history. This is quite a distinction, as the woman faced stiff competition from the nerd in my fourth grade classroom who went ballistic whenever anyone made the sllghtest fun of his rather amusing name, not to mention the evil incarnate Mrs. Moore, who allegedly chose a different student each year on whom to unleash her venom.  The eight grade English teacher of whom I know write had quite an act to follow, and she did so with flourish.

I've mentioned this woman before. She was the one who had the students do presentations throughout most of the year so that she wouldn't need to actually teach anything herself. She's the one who was allegedly in charge when I gave my infamous book report on The Essentials of Proctology, which, I've been told, was a major topic of discussion at my hgih school class's three-year reunion 9which I did not attend; who ever heard of having a 3-year reunion?) even though it happened in middle school and not high school.

Most of the year, actually, didn't even consist of student presentations. We mostly chased each other around the room and threw things across the room at eag other while our teacher kept herself current on the latest editions of  Cosmo and Vogue.  I was once written up for taking my book outside and sitting beside the door to read because I didn't want to be injured  while all manner of mayhem went on inside the classroom. The week earlier, I had been hit in the eye with a flying pencil and still had a patch on my eye because of the corneal laceration that resulted. The principal took one look at the referral and invited me to come into his outer office to read anytime the noise and activity level got to the point that I could no longer tolerate it.

It was a nice gesture on the part of my principal, but an even nicer gesture would have been for him to have gone into the classroom and restored order. He did actually try that the first two weeks of school, after the first two days of class were a clear indication that our teacher showed deficits both in instructional methods and classroom management skills. The principal taught the class for the next two weeks with the teacher sitting in the rear of the classroom allegedly taking notes. I could see that the only actual notes that she was taking were notes in the margins of her fashion magazines concerning various styles and combinations of separates that she was considering adding to her winter wardrobe collection.

After two weeks of the principal teaching our class, the so-called teacher took over again. Her first act as a teacher was to announce that we would each be required to analyze some work by the author Willa Cather and would present our findings to the class the  following week. She then took us to the school library. It was not our day to be in the school library. Our teacher and the librarian carried on a loud and extended argument while the librarian checked out books for the class that actually was supposed to be in the library at that time. Meanwhile, I consulted the library's database to discover that the library theoretically owned three works by Willa Cather: O Pioneer!, The Song of the Lark, and One of Ours. I checked the shelves, and only The Song of the Lark and One of Ours were present. No record existed of O Pioneers! having been checked out. Its location was one of life's great mysteries.

Even though it wasn't our class's turn to check out books, I was allowed to  check out One of Ours because i was on good terms with the school librarian. I was holding the single copy of the only other Cather volume available in our library and offered it to anyone who was interested, but there were no takers. Clearly, no one else in the class had any intention of even starting the assignment, much less completing it.

I asked the teacher exactly what she wanted by way of a presentation focusing upon the Cather book I checked out to read. The teacher was vague at best. "Make it your own," she told me. "Show us all how it relates to you and to your life." 

Set in the time of WWI and the Spanish Flu, One of Ours dealt with a man (the character was actually supposed to have been a composite of Cather and of a cousin of hers who enlisted in WWi and was killed in battle in France) who was essentially dissatisfied with his lot in life as a Nebraska student and later farmer and husband. He was freed from an unhapy marriage when his wife took off to care for her ailing sister, who was a missionary in China. He eventually found fulfillment by enlisting in the U.S. Army.

Reading the book as a twelve-year-old was  bad enough. I was an avid reader and had been reading works considered to be for mature readers for several years, but nothing about this book struck my fancy. If it barely held my interest, I was unsure as to how to create a presentation to hold the interest of a class that was more accustomed to holding spitball wars and drawinf X-rated comics than to listening to anyone speak about anything. My teacher, however, was threatening to fail me if I did not come through with a presentation, which was to take place on the day of her first formal observation and evaluation.  This was hardly fair, as no one else in the class was reading works by Willa Cather or, for that matter, by anyone else, unless one counted the porno magazines that a few of the boys were smuggling in or the self-authored X-rated comics. (This was before the teacher got the idea to bring in the girlie magazines herself in order to hold the boys' attention and give herself a few minutes of peace in which to read her fashion magazines with fewer distractions.) Life, however, is inherently unfair, which I had long since learned. It was up to me to devise a presentation that would temporarily keep my teacher from being fired.

i knew that the only way to hold my rowdy classmates' attention was to directly involve them. For three days prior to the presentation, I brought my parents' video camera (this was before all of our phones took such high-quality videos) and directed various classmates in acting out scenes from the Cather novel. i wrote up large cue cards on poster boards because none of the dullards were going to memorize any lines.  

The only scenes that were done with any emotion whatsoever were the love scenes (not actually in the book but added on the basis of artistic license), the war scenes,  and the  scene where the wife left to go to the aid of her sister. I actually rewrote that scene, showing the sister arriving in China and having the two sisters turn out to be lesbian lovers, which was displayed in graphic detail in the video by two students, one of whom was actually a male in drag. That was the scene that  garnered the most attention. My video reenactment wasn't in any way that true to the novel, but since the teacher hadn't read the novel, the point was moot. and at least the class was quiet when the video was being shown because they all wanted to see and hear their own performances.

I thought I had delayed the inevitable in keeping Ms. X from being fired. Little did I know that unless the woman had assaulted or molested a student, she was there for the duration of the year. The district had to pay her since she was under contract and had neither assaulted nor molested any of us (in truth, she was too damned lazy to do either), and the district wasn't about to pay two people to perform a single job. Our educations were sacrificed in the name of the almighty dollar.

Later in the year came the proctology book report, the assigned readings of Hustler, Oui, and Playboy,  and other more controversial teaching practices. Once we wanted to have a party in class that day. Our teacher told us if we could come up with the goods, we could have it. Hardly anyone had any money. The teacher allowed us to go door-to-door in the community collecting funds for "school supplies." The good people of our town coughed up something like forty-seven dollars. Someone went to a store next to the school and bought chips, donuts, and soda. Because it was a two-period class, we had ample time to party after collecting the cash and making our purchases.

One time a child has a seizure in the class. The teacher was so freaked out that the paramedics had to take her to the hospital as well as the student. Had it not been for a couple of us whose parents had medical backgrounds, 9-1-1 wouldn't even have been called. God only knows what otherwise would have happened both to the child who had the seizure as well as to the teacher, who was over-the-top in hysterics.

Once a couple of non-mainstream students (most of us were the children of professionals who were relatively closely supervised when we were not in the jungle of this woman's classroom, but a couple of the kids were wild no ,matter what their setting) brought drugs to class. The rest of us were so afraid that we were going to be found guilty by association and be arrested that we left the classroom and joined a physical education class that was playing softball. The P.E. teacher asked what the problem was, and then called the principal. I beleieve the two students were arrested. The teacher pled ignorance and actually got away with it.

Through the grace of God, everyone who was in that class is still alive today. (Claire was not in that class.) As for the teacher, I haven't a clue as to her whereabouts. She could be working for the Republican National Party, she could be incarcerated in Lompoc Federal Penitentiary, or she could be dead. We never heard a thing about her after her contract was not renewed for the following year. Chances are that, whatever it is she's doing if she's doing anything at all, she is no longer teaching, since she never taught even when she was under contract to teach.

Good Teachers, REALLY Bad Teachers, and Good Versus Evil

No one in his or her right mind ever said teaching was easy. In my K-12 experience, I've had forty-two teachers. Of those forty-two teachers, three were unfit to teach. Two more were marginally competent. The other thirty-seven ranged from adequate to exceptionally good. 

We've all had, at the very least, a few marginally competent teachers in our educational careers. I had at least two teachers who would have fallen into this category.  Many of us of us have had the misfortune of having outrightly unfit teachers. I've had a few of them as well. One of them I was fortunate enough to lose after the principal discovered that I was the child of educated parents. It seemed that the administration of the school did not put children in the man's class whose parents were likely to recognize that the teacher had "issues." As my family was new to the district and my mother worked for a neighboring district, my parents were not recognized as such. About six weeks into the school year the misplacement became apparent, and I was moved into the class of a teacher who possessed at least the minimal skills needed to teach fourth graders. The move was great for me, but what about the other twenty-nine children whose parents weren't sufficiently prominent to have their children moved into the class of someone who more or less knew how to teach? Were they any less deserving of competent teachers simply because their parents weren't savvy to the workings of the school system?

It's a particular ax I have to grind with school systems in most places. The children of wealthy, educated, or otherwise influential parents are given the better teachers. Those whose parents are none of those things are too often placed in the classes of those who do not know how to teach because the parents either lack the knowledge of the system or are too humble to complain.

In reality, the children of educated and influential parents would, for the most part, be OK with the less qualified teachers as long as those teachers treated children reasonably well.  i'm not suggesting that those parents would necessarily like the idea of teaching their children every night and weekend, but it would happen if there were no way around it. My mother's biological children would have mastered the state standards of each grade level had our teachers been illiterates who looked at comic books all day long instead of teaching us.  My parents were probably extreme examples, but, for the most part, educated parents would see to it that their children learned what they needed to learn whether the teachers at school taught it to them or not. I don't think I learned anything for the first time at school until high school government class, and even then, it was only a very small portion of the curriculum that was new to me. My mother expected my brother and me to type annotated research papers, usung either MLA or APA style depending upon the subject content (on topics of our own choosing to make it at least a bit interesting and fun to us) the summer after we finished second grade. My dad had us differentiating between plant and animal cells under a microscope before we started school, and taught us the basic differences between  normal blood cells and cancerous ones by the time we were in third grade.  Other even educated parents might not have taken matters quite so far into their own hands, but they at least would have  had their children visiting public libraries more or less weekly, and would have had their children reading and writing often enough to know if there had been deficits in basic reading skills, reading comprehension, or writing conventions.

When a teacher's deficits in competency lay primarily in his or her inability to treat children as children should be treated, even a parent most skilled at educating will not be able to undo the damage and remediate the moral and emotional support that has been neglected. It's very difficult to rebuild a child's soul after it has been torn to shreds. Teachers who do such damage are the very worst teachers on the planet and do not deserve  second chances to destroy more children after having been caught damaging even one. God knows how many children such  teachers have harmed before they are caught for the first time in the destruction of the fragile psyche of a child.

I had one teacher who was marginally damaging in this way. I was removed from his class because it was discovered that my parents were the sort who would not stand for such a shoddy excuse for a teacher. But what about those children whose parents were not the sort whom school administrators actively avoided offending? Why should those children have had to spend the remainder of the year under the tutelage of a man who did not like either children or teaching? He probably disliked me more than he disliked the average child in the class, but it's doubtful that he actually liked any child in the class. He was allowed to continue with his subtle yet devastating effects upon the very cores of the children who were unfortunate enough to be left in his care.  My  hope is he did not last  long in the field of education . He seemed to dislike teaching in general and children in particular. My best-case scenario is that his dislike of the profession eventually drove him from the field.

I was moved after maybe seven weeks of the purgatory-at-best of the man's class into the class of a teacher who was probably not the brightest bulb on the Christmas Tree of Life, but she at least had the decency to smile at us once in awhile, and she acted sympathetic toward any child who was injured, ill, or upset. She had  sufficient mastery of basic fractions, decimals, and long division to impart it to the students who entered her classroom not yet having mastered those concepts. On the rare occasion that she misspelled a word on the board and someone pointed it out to her, she politely thanked the child who pointed it out and quickly corrected it.

This contrasts sharply with Mrs. Moore, my fifth grade teacher, about whom I've written previously. Mrs. Moore appeared to like some of the children in the class, but for whatever reason, she held an obvious dislike for me. The problem may have had its roots in religion. Mrs. Moore was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. My father, though not formally excommunicated, is no longer considered a member of that church in good standing. My grandfather is an authority in the upper echelons of that church. Mrs. Moore may have decided that my entire nuclear family consisted of bad people. 

Then again, religion may have been the very least of it.  I can only guess what may have been going through Mrs. Moore's demented mind. I couldn't please her no matter how hard I tried. I soon learned not to point out any errors to her -- of which there were many -- because her face would turn very red and her features would become pinched, and she would find some reason to discipline me within the next few minutes following my having pointed out her error.  In the grand scheme of things, though, academic content was the very least of any conflict between Mrs. Moore and myself.

Mrs. Moore didn't like my messy hair. Neither did I. I HATED my hair. I had been born essentially bald. What hair eventually came in was ramrod straight until one day when I was five. It had been a hot and humid night, and when I woke up, there was some curl to my hair, which we all found odd. Each day it seemed to get a bit curlier until it was somewhere between Shirley-Temple curly and a garden variety Afro without benefit of a perm. I had the tan that many children maintain through childhood, which is, I suppose, Mother Nature's way of protecting children from constant sun burns. My hair was wildly curly, My skin was bronze to the point of giving me an ethnic look, and my eyes were very blue. I had the look of a strangely bi-racial child. On top of my otherwise somewhat odd appearance, I was shorter than most children three years younger than I and had the build of a starving refugee. My hair was difficult to manage, and I hated the wild curls every bit as much as Mrs. Moore did if not more so. 

My mother would attempt to French braid my hair, but however tightly she braided it, the job would last no more than an hour or so before the hair would begin to pull loose. My father discovered the miraculous invention known as a hair straightener and would painstakingly flat-iron my hair to straightness on mornings when he was home. As long as it wasn't foggy and I kept my head under an umbrella on rainy days, the straightening held. 

My mother was not a morning person and did not have time to straighten my hair before school. I tried to straighten my own hair with the straightener, but I burned myself several times. Mrs. Moore threatened  to  call Child Protective Services if she saw one more burn mark on my neck or face. My family had dealt with CPS the previous year when a rather perverted and nosy girl had peeked over the restroom stall when I was using the school bathroom after I had sat on my brother's Mardi Gras beads all the way from Las Vegas almost to Fresno following a trip celebrating my uncle's birthday, leaving a string of bead-shaped red bruises along my bottom and thigh. The girl ran out of the bathroom and into the office screaming that Alexis had herpes. Instead of telling the little pervert to mind her own business, the school secretary had called CPS. This resulted in CPS caseworkers showing up on our doorstep the following morning, and in my having to show my nude bottom to them and explain about the Mardi Gras beads. I was forced to stand in a state of partial nudity while the workers compared the shape of the Mardi Gras beads to the marks on my skin to determine whether I was telling the truth about how the marks got on my skin. I wasn't eager for any sort of  a repeat encounter with Child Protective Services, so I left the curling iron to my dad and let my mom French braid my hair when Dad was not home in the mornings.

On picture day of my fifth grade year, my father was in Boston, so I had a French braid job instead of straight hair that day. I tried extremely hard to keep my head still so that my hair wouldn't loosen itself from its moorings before our pictures were taken, but grades preschool through four had to take pictures before we did, along with sixth grade, as the 6th grade GATE students had to leave campus at 10:15 on Wednesdays. My hair looked like its usual mess by the time my class was set up to take students' pictures. At the time, I knew I could not have looked very good in the school pictures, but tried to dismiss the thought from my mind and tried not to dwell on it.

Mrs. Moore had made barely veiled comments about my appearance more than once. Several times she'd said things like, "At least one girl in this class is not pretty," while looking directly at me, "but people would think she was pretty if only she would be sweet and kind." I thought it may have been my imagination that she was looking at me as she made her remarks, but other girls commented on how she had been looking directly at me, I distinctly remember a girl named Jenna saying, "I don't understand why she keeps talking about how ugly you are. You're not exactly Miss America, but you're not THAT ugly." I really don't believe it was my paranoia leading me to believe Mrs. Moore was referring to me in her speeches.

I know I've shared this before, so don't read if you remember it and I'm boring you, but one day in early December the school pictures were delivered to our classrooms. Each child's portrait was displayed through a cellophane or wax paper-covered window in the packet. Mrs. Moore looked at each child's picture, then called the child forward to retrieve his or her child's packet. The child was allowed to decide whether he or she wanted to show  his or her picture to the class. Most of the girls giggled and acted as though they didn't want anyone else to see their pictures, but then, upon coaxing, held their pictures up for all to see. Some boys showed their pictures in an "I don't care" sort of way, while others chose not to let anyone else see their pictures. 

When Mrs. Moore came to my picture, she paused in looking at it, and her faced turned to a deep shade of red. "Don't you even own a comb?" she shouted, looking directly at me though not using my name. I looked down. She held the picture up for all the students to see. Most of the students laughed -- some rather nervously -- though a few remained silent. Some children develop consciences early in life and know when others are not  being treated humanely. Mrs. Moore took the four or so strides needed to reach my desk in the back of the classroom. She slapped my picture packet down hard onto the surface of my desk, then stormed back to the front of the room. "I don't know why anyone would want those," she muttered about my pictures.

I somehow made it through the last few minutes of the afternoon without crying. When the dismissal bell rang, instead of walking to the cafeteria/auditorium where the after-school daycare program took place, I used the change I should have used for milk money that day but didn't to catch a municipal transit bus home. I found the hidden key, turned off the alarm, and let myself into the house. My mother was eventually contacted when I didn't appear for after-school daycare. The school was searched. When I wasn't found on the premises there, my mother came home to look for me. I was told that Mrs. Moore said nothing unusual had happened at school that day and that I hadn't seemed upset when I left for the day. Several students from my class in the after-school daycare program contradicted her account.

I was in the process of destroying pictures of myself from family photo albums when my mother unlocked the door to my room and found me. She got there just before I reached the next phase of my plan, which was either to cut my hair or to shave my head; I wasn't certain how drastic a step would be needed to rid my hair of its ugliness. That afternoon and evening, and after a few calls from other parents whose children had shared various stories of the happenings in the classroom, the chronicle of my entire year of psychological abuse at the hands of Mrs. Moore was divulged to my mother.

My father, who had flown home that evening, arriving after midnight, took me to have my hair chemically straightened the next day. The following day I returned to school, but not to Mrs. Moore's class. My family had moved earlier in the fall, and the initial plan had been for Matthew and me to finish the year in the previous neighborhood school within the same district, and then to make the transition to the new school the following year, in sixth grade.  Instead, both Matthew and I made the move two days after Mrs. Moore's unconscionable treatment of me. I learned much later that nine parents had demanded that their children be moved from Mrs. Moore's class that week. In most cases, the children were not targets of Mrs. Moore's vitriol, but their parents either didn't want their children witnessing such cruelty or considered that if she could treat one child in such a manner, what was to prevent their children from being targeted next? Mrs. Moore was reassigned to non-classroom duties for the remainder of that year, and left the district at the end of the year.

The photographer who had been contracted to take pictures for the school district presumably heard about the incident, as the school district claimed to have had no commnication with the photographer concerning my situation. I have no clue as to how the photographer learned of the situation except that it was a not-terribly-large town in which news travels quickly. In any event, the photographer called my parents and made an appointment to come to my house and re-shoot my pictures. He also came to my new school and shot a class picture even though he had already taken a picture of that class on their school's picture day more than a month earlier. He wouldn't take any money from my parents. A deluxe package arrived in the mail less than two weeks later.  My parents used the photographer's kindness to point out to my brother and to me that for every rotten person we'll ever encounter, there are probably at least two really good people, and that good usually (though not always) triumphs over evil.

My concern is that if Mrs. Moore had treated a child from the wrong side of the tracks in such a way, and if no child whose parents were influential had thought to mention any of Mrs. Moore's words or actions to them, her abuse might have continued for God knows how long.

Soon enough, I had the eye-opening experience of being in Mr. Thatcher's class, where an entire world was opened up to me, and where I learned that school was more wonderful than I had ever dreamed it could be, and that my only limitations in life were ones I arbitrarily place upon myself. I wish every child could experience Mr. Thatcher.  I'm sure Mr. Thatcher was what God had in mind when God invented teachers.

Children from less than privileged backgrounds are in greater need of teachers with strong mastery of subject matter than are children of privilege. And all children are deserving of teachers who are decent human beings and who treat children with compassion. The vast majority of teachers in our school systems have a mastery of the subjects they teach.. The vast majority also are kind, caring individuals. More needs to be done, however, to cull those who are not deserving of the privilege of teaching children.

P.S. My next post will be about what was supposed to be the subject of this post before I was sidetracked, which was the wack job English teacher I had in eighth grade.

Brigham Young: Appendicitis and Peritonitis or ARSENIC????

How could such an apparently affable man have a price on his head?

Here's Brig with at least part of his immediate family.

In my current situation, Saturday is typically reserved for studying. I study in groups, and if the group studying is not sufficient for my comfort level, I study independently for the bulk of my time. Nonetheless, i take a few minutes to catch up on correspondence, current events, and other such matters. I was pleased to read that the duchess of Cambridge has given birth to a daughter. While I don't devote a disproportionate amount of time worrying about for the day-to-day concerns of the British royals, or, for that matter, any other royals, I hope they name her Charlotte. it's a very trendy name right now. Alice has been suggested as a likely name as well, but I really don't like the name Alice. Diana seems like a heavy legacy with which to burden a child.

Last night was my free time. I chose to use it in research of the possibility that Brigham Young died of poisoning as opposed to a ruptured appendix, which was listed [allegedly quite some time after the fact, and by a physician who was a close relative] as the official cause of death.  Many of the symptoms attributed to Brigham Young -- particularly extreme muscle cramping -- are more commonly associated with arsenic poisoning than with appendicitis and/or a ruptured appendix.

The suggestion of arsenic poisoning was mentioned in the context of acute arsenic poisoning as opposed to the more benign incidental exposure. had young been incidentally exposed, it could be surmised that many people along with Young would have been similarly exposed, and no reports exist of widespread suffering of symptoms similar to those experienced by Young.

Who in the days of Brigham Young might have desired to see him dead? Sorting through the list of suspects is approximately as cumbersome as trying to pinpoint just who might have had motive to push Humpty Dumpty off the wall, if not even  more so.  Brigham Young had many wives. Some legally severed their ties from him. Others were  were estranged. Even among those not estranged or divorced from him, feuds took place on a regular basis, both between the wives and between the wives and Brigham himself. . 

From what I've observed, maintaining harmony in a monogamous marriage isn't always as simple as one might think it would be. If a man or woman meets an untimely and/or suspicious demise, the spouse is usually the first person investigated as having been involved in foul play, even when, from all accounts, the union was considered to be a mutually beneficial one. Multiply that by twenty-five or fifty-four or how ever many women Brigham Young actually married, and you have a  formula for motive of murder right before your eyes. The wives cannot be ruled out as suspects.

Forces from within the U. S. government had cause to wish ill will upon The Lion of the Lord (or "The Liar of the Lord," depending upon one's preference and point of view.) at one point when the U.S. government sent troops to Utah to force Brigham Young into submission, The Prophet seriously considered burning Salt Lake City to the ground and moving his band of merry wives and other various and sundry band of  saints south of the border. Perhaps word reached him that Mexico was not exactly the land of milk and honey that he had previously thought it to be. In any event, . Brother Brigham later though better of his plan and chose to spare SLC, Happy Valley, and the remainder of the State of the Deseret, and kept his people there.  Still, someone from among the U.S. government might have considered that the entire Mormon quandary would be most efficaciouly managed if The Mormon Moses had bought the farm, so to speak, and were competing on behalf of  the underground side of the playing field. The feds, or at least someone among them, cannot be eliminated as culprits.

Mormon prophets serve as long as they live and breather. Those next in line have been known to have ambitions to acend to the role. some may not be entirely thrilled with the prospect of allowing nature to take its course and might possibly desire to hasten things along in order to more quickly assmue leadership of the church.  This seems to be a slippery slope, as he who lives and rules by virtue of the sword, or, more appropriately in this case, arsenic, might just as easily die by the same means with Karma being the bitch that she is purported to be. Nonetheless, we cannot entirely rule out John Taylor or anyone immediately below him in the line of succession, as potential perps. The plot both thickens and sickens.

Rumor -- being not quite the proper Mormon scholar befitting my lineage, I can neither confirm nor deny such rumor -- has it that  Brother Brigham had planned to stage a bit of a coup where church leadership succession was concerned. Said rumor has it that Young planned to bypass the  leadership of the Quorum of the Twelve [the very leadership of which had allowed him ascendancy to the Presidency and Prophetship] in favor of his own lineage. brigham Young , Jr., was reportly his choce to succeed him, with other direct descendants aalso in line for key positions. If this conspiracy were for real -- and it's a huge stretch, I admit -- it opens multiple possibilities of conspirators to rob Brigham Young the Original of his remaining natural days. First and foremeost, those who would ascend to Church leadership by virtue of their leadership in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles might wish to end Brigham Young's life before such arrangements could be finalized. conversely, those who stood to benefit from this change in protocol, believing erroneously that the changes might already have been in effect, might have wished to speed up the timetable in able to more expeditiously assume power. 


                  The suspects have been named.
                  I've mentioned nearly all.
                  It now is up to you
                  To make the final call.


     Who poisoned Brigham Young?

The Good and the Bad

probably more truth to this than anyone would care to admit

with my youngest professor, who is technically an assistant professor

Good and bad can be found in virtually all aspects of one's life, and this current chapter of my life in medical school is no exception.

One good thing is that my cast has been removed. There was a possibility that I might need to transition into a fracture boot, but that turned out not to be the case. It took me two days to walk normally, but those two days have passed, and I'm no longer a poster child for some crippling disease. (God bless those who actually are afflicted with such maladies.) The cast was stylish, but even the best of casts will begin to smell at least a bit after a couple of months of daily wear. I mitigated the perspiration damage with liberal use of Febreeze, but I still noticed the smell even if everyone else was kind enough to insist they didn't notice it. In another ten days or so I expect to be given the clearance to begin running again.

Another good thing in my life now is that school is going well. I haven't yet been hit with any material that  has been beyond my ability  to comprehend or to memorize, nor has it been beyond my ability to make it understandable to my brother. A large part of my life has been about explaining things in a language my brother would understand. My brother is smart, but he has to hear things in the right way to understand them. My mom could not teach him to play the piano. I had to do it. I didn't really have to, but it's the only likely way he would have learned to play the piano, and I knew my mom really wanted him to play the piano. The guitar he was able to pick up on his own with some help from my dad, but the foundation in piano helped him to make sense of what he encountered in learning guitar.

When my brother and I were in our early years of high school, it was a tough decision as to whether or not to help him with academic subjects. Our relationship wasn't at its best, and anytime we had the same course section, or even different periods of the same course with the same instructor, I had to do better than he did just as a matter of principle, but it was typically a foregone conclusion that my scores would be higher. In the end, I would always help him. The twin bond is stronger than any rivalry in which we may have been participants. 

If I sound cutthroat and mean in never allowing Matthew to outscore me on tests, assignments, or total points or averages leading to grades, keep in mind that he has excelled in areas in which I didn't. While  we're both athletes in our own rights, he is superior overall with regard to gross motor skills. I can catch and can even hit a fast-pitched ball (baseball or softball -- I'm not afraid of either ball) as long as it's pitched fast; with a slow-pitch format, I lack the strength and timing to generate my own power in an effective way. I also throw "like a girl," so to speak. I recognize that it's considered a sexist thing to stay, and that there are very feminine women in society who are in possession of natural and skilled throwing motions, but one of my professors -- a woman -- said that it's an evolutionary biological adaptation that most males throw more naturally than do most [though not not all] females. Males, as part of their historic gender roles, have been throwing rocks and other objects  at potential threats and at prey since prehistoric times. Such has been offered as an explanation as to why males typically [though not in every case] throw with greater power and fluidity than do most females. I run fast, but Matthew, with his longer and more muscled legs, runs faster. He doesn't hurdle with the ease that I do, but that's primarily because he has not put in the practice time on hurdles that I have. His gymnastics and tumbling skills are practically nonexistent, but he has neither the build nor the interest to succeed in the sport of gymnastics.

Further, Matthew was given or somehow developed a personality that I will never acquire however hard I may strive to develop my interpersonal skills. I'm not a total social misfit, but Matthew can be comfortable in any setting and is liked almost wherever he goes. i'm not disliked, but neither am I the life of the party or the person a host thinks absolutely must be in attendance for a gathering to be a successful event. I have to be content with treating everyone with kindness and hoping they treat me kindly in return. Matthew is kind to others, but people would still like him even if he were not.  

Teachers in middle school and high school used to try to tell us that we were all essentially the same . Some of us were stronger in particular areas, while others were weak in those areas, but stronger in different areas. It all evens out, they would tell us. I've found that not to be the case. I've met people who are highly gifted in every area that I've been able to observe, and I've met others who are weak in every area that I was able to observe. (most of us fall somewhere between the two extremes.) Sometimes life isn't fair. All a person can do is to make the very most of his own innate abilities and to attempt to develop those abilities that are not inherent strengths if the person requires those abilities in order to succeed  at  his or her desired goal or goals, or the person cares enough to want those abilities for whatever reason.

Class is more good than bad, and is usually interesting, but there's no way such long lectures can be even 90% entertaining. Medical Practice has thus far been roughly  40% lecture and 60% practicum, but Human Health and Disease is almost entirely lecture. (A lab task is occasionally assigned, but it usually is to be completed outside of class time.) I've taken to wearing dark glasses and saying that I have eye issues so that in the event that I ever really cannot remain conscious, the instructor will be accustomed to seeing me in dark glasses. If any professor ever chooses to make an issue of it, I can get one of the many doctors to whom I am related to cover for me with a note explaining some nonexistent [in me, anyway] ophthalmological condition.  Someone sitting near me may have to awaken me quickly and whisper the question I was asked, but I'm confident in the people sitting near me to wake me and  in my ability to answer any fair question that is thrown my way.  My professors so far have asked only reasonable questions. 

I'm told that the time will come when we will face questions concerning material about which we haven't been taught and which hasn't been covered in assigned readings. Our only hope of knowing the answers will be having been in the right place at the right time when a related case was discussed, having read about it on our own, or somehow having come into contact with it in our lives. For this reason, I'm  spending what little spare time I have reading articles from pertinent journals. Some of the material is available for free online, but not all of it is. I've subscribed to the online editions of  three journals. Everything else I hope to access through the generosity of  my dad, my aunts and uncles, and my former shrink, with whom I'm still in regular contact.

Another negative but expected aspect of life for me now is that I'm still dealing in a major way with missing Claire. The shock over her death has mostly passed, but there are still times when I reach for my cell phone with the intent of calling her before I pause to realize that she's no longer available by phone. I need to spend at least a bit of time with her family this summer.

Part of the good in my life is this year's summer vacation. It's my last real summer vacation until I graduate from medical school, at which time I will have a break between graduation time and July 1, when I will begin my internship. I was scheduled to teach calculus at a summer school near my parents' home, but I sent a registered letter to the principal and to the governing board giving my regrets and apologies that i would not be able to fulfill the duties associate with the teaching job. The money would be nice, but I have a respectable savings account balance.  The time is worth ore to me than the money that I would have earned would be. In addition to spending time with my Godchild and with his mother, who is due to deliver this summer, i can spend time shadowing doctors in the hope of gaining that esoteric information that will eventually be most valuable when I least expect to need to draw upon it.

After year two of medical school, I'll have no more than a week off in summer. I may get an interval off during the scheduling of clerkships, and if I do, I'll use the time both to recharge my figurative battery and to vacation, but summer vacation as I have always known it will be history after this summer. It was difficult to say no to the teaching position, but the more I thought about it, the more strongly I felt that I would be earning money but little else. At this point in my educational career, there are things more important than money.

So as I approach my final summer vacation, I  would like to make the very most of the two months plus change.  I need to bond with my Godchild and his soon-to-be-born little sister. I probably won't be asked to be her Godmother, but she's still a cousin and a child to the aunt and uncle to which I feel closer than to any adults other than my parents.

I hope this summer doesn't pass by me before I accomplish all I've set out to accomplish. I usually meet whatever goals I've set for myself, but my mom tells me that this summer's goals may be too ambitious for an interval slightly under ten weeks. Time alone will tell.

twins from different mothers