Changes in Plans for Me and for Others

I was supposed to depart via charter flight for the central coast of California in order to be present for the birth of my Godchild. Alas, plans have changed, as they frequently do whre the births of babies are concerned. Jillian's blood oxygen levels have improved since she's been allowed out of bed. it had been anticipated that the increase in activity would place greater demands on her diminished oxygen supply, but the reverse has happened; increased activity has made it easier for her to breathe.

D-Day is now October 31, although there's no guarantee that the baby will wait until then. I've been told to  have my bags packed, which they already are, and to be ready to leave with five minutes' notice. If it's in the middle of the night, Jillian's brother Tim will call me and will pick me up five minutes later to drive to the airport. I'll probably travel in my pjs if the call comes after I'm in bed. Tim lives in the same complex as I do. If the call comes during the day, my suitcase will be in my car. I'm packing lightly anyway since I have clothing and toothbrushes at home. I could get by without packing anything. my brother has convinced me to leave my kitty at the condo. The guy who hates cats has fallen in love with mine.

If nothing happens between now and then, Timmy and I will leave Thursday at 3:30 p.m. I'll return on the following Wednesday. I can afford to miss four days of class, or so my advisor and professors say. I hope they're not playing a dirty trick on me so that others can catch up. We have no official class rankings for the first six quarters, but we all know what the unofficial rankings are. Two others (both Asians, one male and one female, not that anyone is keeping track of such things) are even with me. The three of us have decided that we're a coalition rather than a competition, and we try to impress the faculty by appearing to be helpful to our more struggling classmates. We actually are helpful to some degree, but not quite so helpful as we try to appear to be. It's a game, and a very cutthroat one at that, but there's still room to be benevolent. Furthermore, blood is thicker than water. I'll do anything to help Matthew.

One girl in our cohort packed up in the dead of night and left. Even her friends don't know exactly what the problem was. She had friends -- I don't know of anyone who actively disliked her --, and she wasn't failing miserably, although I believe she failed one exam. One girl who knew her better than most said she was somewhat accustomed to prom queen status, and no one around here cares much about such things. Also, the friend said she had taken the bare minimum of course requirements for premed admissions, so she may not have been totally accustomed to the academic demands of medical school, not to mention the time constraints.  If it's really not what she wants, I'm glad she figured it out before investing even more time and money in a medical education. I wish she had just been up front about it and said goodbye to everyone, but she may have been embarrassed to do so. In any event, I wish her well.  Everyone around here is acting as though she committed suicide. She didn't. She just chose to turn her life in a different direction. If she was able to get into medical school, she should have many other good options available to her.

Matthew and I are the youngest students in our cohort, but there is a second-year student in the program who is only six months older than we are.  I believe he's doing the five-year program, though, so we'll all graduate at the same time if he sricks with the extended program. Matthew has been encouraged to consider the five-year program because of his young age and because his entry qualifications weren't exactly blowing everyone else out of the water, but so far he's in the top half of the cohort (in the nonexistent rankings) so his advisor isn't bugging him about it quite so much. There's always time in future quarters to lighten his load and to take a longer path to get through the program, but there's no reason if he's passing with ease.

Anyway, my vacation has been delayed, but the important thing is that I will get the vacation. Delaying gratification isn't necessarily one of my favorite things, but I'm learning to live with ilie about.

P.S. So far, Judge Alex is wrong. No one has asked me out or even flirted with me. My behind-my-back nickname is "Jailbait" even though I'm just over a month away from 20.

Edited to correct my age. I lie about my age so frequently because I hate admiting how young I am (although my appearance does nothing to make my lies believable) that I sometimes forget my real age.

A Brief Respite from the Daily Grind

This isn't what I'm likely to see in the delivery I'll witness, as the baby will be about six weeks early and is projected to weigh in at around five pounds at the time of  his birth.

This more closely resmbles what I am likely to observe.

Because I've done well on all the tests given thus far at my medical school and haven't yet missed a class session, and because the experience would be beneficial to my medical education, I have been granted permission from all my professors as well as from my dean to miss however many classes I must miss this week in order to be present for the surgical delivery of my pseudoant's child. If labor doesn't commence before Friday, the baby will be taken by c-section early Friday morning. Pseudoaunt's brother is being transported by charter flight to the city where the baby will be born. I'll tag along. 

If labor begins but progresses mildly with no distress to either the mother or the baby, the surgical team will hold off until we arrive before beginning the surgery. They don't actually care whether or not I make it on time, but pseudoaunt would like for her brother to be there when her baby is born.

My only requirement is that I write up a brief synopsis  -- more or less what the actual surgeon would dictate for the chart and for the insurance carrier. I can do that in five minutes. My only requirement as far as the medical team is concerned is that I stay out of the way and keep my mouth shut. If the baby is born in one of the surgical suites with a viewing area from above overlooking it, I'll be up there, as I do not need to take up space in the O.R. if I can observe from a distance.

Pseudoaunt's brother has time off for something like nine days, so I'll have to find alternative transportation back, but my mom said she will drive me.  I would like to take my kitty with me, but my brother says she should stay because she's not all that used to us yet, and transporting her to another home wwould confuse her. He just wants the cat there with him. His rationale is entirely bullshit. Regardless, I'll probably let him keep the kitty there with him.

   Whether the baby is born tomorrow morning or Friday morning, I'll return on Sunday. I haven't been home since August, but I'm not exactly dying to get there. I have the same W model of Westin bed in the condo that I have at home. My surroundings at the condo are quite comfortable. I'll bring textbooks with me, so I'll study regardless of where I am. I just want to see the baby. I'm not overly eager to see his birth; that's just my rationale for being allowed to leave. I just want to see the baby.

   I am to be his Godmother. I've never been a Godparent before. I'm not sure when his parents will have him baptized, but I'll have to be present for the ceremony.

   Incidentally, I scored 100% on my GI block exam. It helps that I've had almost everything possible go wrong with my own GI block at one time or another, which gave me considerable prior knowledge. My brother scored 90%, which was in the top third of the class, not that anyone is keeping track, as we have no official class rankings until 5th quarter.

I'm a fungus; you're a protozoa: 1st-quarter med school and studying

Beware the nannycam, which may be found in the moost innocuous of places.

I have a major exam this week. It's my GI block exam. I wouldn't say that I'm confident going into the exam, but I'm freaking out less than many of those around me. I've been overstudying -- certainly not in all courses, but in the tough ones at least -- since high school, so it's not a new concept to me. I've long since  mastered what some of my peers are just now starting to learn.

Because I don't actually have anything resembling a social life, I've taken up babysitting two nights a week. It doesn't go too late, as it's always either for a neighbor, professor, resident, or fellow med student. None of these people retain party animal status if they ever had it. I  only babysit Monday through Thursday, and I accept the first two jobs that are offered. I don't take money. The professors have a hard time with this, as they desire my services because I'm good, not because i'm free, but every time one of them insists on giving me money, I drop a receipt in the mail to show them they've donated it. They need the tax write-off for charitable contributions more than I do. I tell them just to make sure there is good food for me to eat, or, in one case, good juice for me to drink.

Last week when I was babysitting, my brother and his study group wanted to come over to the professor's house where I was sitting so that I could study with them. It was nice  that they wanted me even if only for my brain and not for my sparkling personality. They've figured out that I have a knack for predicting what will be on exams.  Regardless, I could not let them into anyone's house without permission from the owners even if the children were already asleep, and I would not bother the couple on their night out to seek permission. I compromised and skyped with them for forty-five minutes since the children didn't need anything except someone to listen in and ensure that they were OK. One reason I'm a highly-sought-after sitter  (my main attraction for med students and residents is that I don't charge, but that's not an issue for professors) is that I do everything by the book and don't break any rules.  Children are probably safer with me than they are with their own parents.

I've found that doctors have bizarre quirks when it comes to their children. One doctor won't let his children eat anything while thep parents are not home. They can drink, but he's paranoid about choking. He has his wife feed the kids dinner before they leave, and then tells everyone that no one is to eat. He doesn't even want me eating. The wife leaves all sorts of things for the children and me to drink, but no one eats anything. One time the older child got really hungry. I gave her milk because that was the best I could do for her. When her parents got home, she immediately got out of bed and begged for food, which they let her have because they were home. The child is in half-day kindergarten this year, but  she'll go to all-day school next year unless they decide to homeschool. I wonder how they will cope with the idea of their child eating solid food out of their presence. Perhaps they'll send her to school with an all-liquid lunch.

A resident doctor for whom I babysat would't allow me to use any heat source in her absence. She had dinner prepared for me and for the two-year-old when I got there, but told me not to heat up anything for the child or even for myself while she was gone. She wouldn't even allow me to use the microwave in her absence. She popped my popcorn for me before se left. She had plenty of snacks that didn't need heating, but absolutely nothing could be heated. I'm not sure if she thought the child or I might get burned, or if she was worried that I would, in my incompetence, torch the place.

This one's slightly less weird, but the wife of another doctor put butcher paper over windows where the blinds don't quite meet the edges of the windows in the living room and kitchen  so that no prospective intruder would peek through any cracks and see that the child was alone with a teenaged babysitter. They live in a gated community in an otherwise nice neighborhood, and their house is alarmed. They say they've never had an intruder before. I suppose they're just paranoid. The professor offered to pay my brother if he would come with me. If I sit for them again, I'll ask Matthew if he wants to come along and make a few bucks by being a bodyguard while he studies. They have really good food for sitters, so Matthew will probably accept. I think it's a bit of overkill, but to each his own.

I operate under the assumption that every house in which I sit has a nanny cam and conduct myself accordingly. So far I've been asked back at pretty much every place I've sat (again, it's a slightly low threshold since I charge nothing), so they must not be unhappy with what they've seen in their nanny cams. One mother wanted to fire her child's piano teacher and hire me to teach the child. I have a degree in piano performance, but I had to draw the line no matter who the lady's husband is. I can part with a few hours a week for babysitting but I cannot cammit to a regular weekly  piano-teaching gig. If I needed the money, I might feel different, but I don't need the money.

One of my professors offered me a 4-week paying gig for next summer. It doesn't pay all that well, but it's job experience that i could probably use.  He works for one month as a summer camp physician, and he's allowed to bring his own assistant. the camp is on the east coast. The camp will pay for my flights. I'll  ave a private room when I'm not on call overnight with sick campers. The main benfit is the "job experience" and the future reference that I'll be able to use. Face it: the job itself sucks, but one must suck certain things up in order to ensure a secure future. It's in June.. I'll have three weeks off before and seven weeks afterward, so I'll have sufficient time to be a vegetable. My primary reservation to accepting the position is that, because it's in a summer camp setting, the kids will probably be forced to sing that godawful song about "I love the mountains, I love the rolling hills, boom de ada," etc.  I hate that song with a vengeance,. Just thinking about it practically causes me to break out in hives.

the world's worst camp song

I Dream of Mitt

                                                                           

In this picture, Mitt looks psychotic enough to actually perpetrate the actions that took place in my dream.

I went to sleep at 11:15 last night, which is unusually early for me. Unfortunately, a long night of sleep was not to be. I woke up a few minutes ago from a strange dream about Mitt Romney. In the dream, Mitt came to my medical school for some undisclosed reason. He ended up holding the entire cohort of Quarter 1 students hostage with a syringe full of what he said was blood saturated with the ebola virus.

Mitt told the students that he could inject everyone, or that the group could select a single candidate to be the recipient of the entire syringe full of ebola-contaminated blood. Anyone who has read more than one or two of my blogs is very likely aware of my rather intense persecution complex. Of course my classmates unanimously elected me to be injected with the ebola-drenched blood in my dream.

I was not going to be Mitt's willing victim, however, and a chase ensued, initially between just Mitt and me, but eventually involving the entire cohort. I hid inside a refrigerated drawer in the anatomy lab, keeping thee drawer open just enough so that I wouldn't suffocate. It was my hope that Mitt wouldn't notice that the drawer was open ever so slightly. He didn't notice at first. He opened numerous drawers in the lab, revealing numerous cadavers; I could see him through the opening as he injected each cadaver he saw.

I couldn't deduce why he was injecting bodies that were already dead, but eventually it occurred to me that when Mitt finally found and injected me, the syringe would not only contain the ebola virus but the germs of almost every cadaver in the lab. I knew I must act.

When Mitt stepped near a walk-in freezer opening, I sprang from my drawer, opened the walk-in freezer door, and pushed Mitt inside. He couldn't get out. Then my classmates  found me in the anatomy lab. I smiled at them and asked that someone call the authorities. My classmates had no interest in doing so. They wanted to deliver me to Mitt.

I tried to explain to the dullards that Mitt was no longer a threat, and that their earlier vote to sacrifice me for their own well being was moot since Mitt was, in essence, captured, but no one saw any logic in my reasoning.  Another chase pursued. I locked myself into an empty office and was in the process of  climbing out an upstairs window into a tree when I woke up. At least I wasn't acting out my dream this time and did not wake up to find myself actually crawling out a window of the condominium.

I tried going back to sleep, but any additional sleep beyond the two-and-one-half hours I already got seems to be a lost cause.  At least my cat was kind enough to ask to be let out of my brother's room, where she has taken to spending her nights, so that I do not have to sit out  the remainder of this night alone.

He doesn't look all that stable in this pic, either.

Are we alone in the universe? Probably not.

It seems to me that most of the people I've ever known ior have seen or heard on TV who claim to have witnessed extraterrestrial visitations to the Earth are not on exactly the same wavelength as most of the rest of us. A relative of a relative of a relative is heavily involved in the organization MUFON, which stands for "Mutual UFO Network."  The guy who shares mutual familial links with me is highly educated and intelligent, but he's not a person with whom I have enough commonality for the two of us even to carry on a comfortable five-minute conversation or to share a cab without awkwardness. I've only gotten his take on the matter third-hand, but the word is that  he seriously believes that the aliens are among us everywhere, posing as Earthlings until they're poised to make a move.

My skepticism concerning most UFO sightings notwithstanding, I  doubt that we, the occupants of Earth, are the only planet-inhabiting beings in the universe.  I have nothing on which to base my suspicions other than conventional logic. With all the uncharted galaxies out there, what are the sheer odds of Earth being the only significantly life-supporting planet?

As to the nature of the inhabitants of other planets, I haven't a clue. If we're all created by the same God, chances are that we would be somewhat similar, but if we're created by different forces. who knows what the beings might be like?  The fact that they apparently  haven't shown up and made their presence clearly known and haven't yet conquered us would lend credence to the idea that they're not leaps and bounds beyond us, but that, too, is highly speculative. Maybe they've seen the disgusting mess we've made of our planet and want no part of us. Then again, perhaps they're just waiting for a time we're distracted -- Super Bowl Sunday or World War III, maybe -- to pounce upon us and claim our planet as their own and to turn us into prisoners or slaves. Or maybe a few of these other ciclizations are so busy fighting it out between eaach other that they haven't even noticed earth yet.

Even if we're all created by the same God, perhaps there are noticeable differences. Maybe we Earthlings are not as perfect in design as we think. We might possibly have been one of God's earlier experimentations. Mormons have backed away from it, but they used to teach, "As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become."  Before Gordon W. Hinckley uttered his famous "I don't know that we teach that" disclaimer about the previously quoted tenet in a nationally televised interview, I believe the oft-quoted maxim was essentially considered doctrine. 

One of my LDS uncles by marriage who is an MD (not Uncle Michael; he's my biological uncle, but he's also much lower-key about his religion than are the other practicing Mormons in the family) used to say that if he ever achieved godhood, he was going to place the nose above the mouth of the bodies he created so that people were less likely to have food fall back into their tracheas and consequently choke. It's conceivable, however unlikely,  that God could have thought of the same thing as my uncle, and a younger planet might be populated by a horde of beings with their mouths right in the middles of their faces. Leave it to one of my relatives to think he has a better plan for how to make people than God does. 


If such is the case and there is another planet filled with people whose mouths are above their noses, I hope they don't invade Earth.  I can't imagine the nightmares I would have after seeing them. I'm not much of an artist, but just for the hell of it, I drew the most realistic face I could render with its nose below its mouth. I really should have left well enough alone, as I'm having trouble getting the image out of my head. I wish I had never drawn it. I'm afraid to google the concept because a more realistic portrayal might genuinely traumatize me. Who knows if the more evolved species' eyes would even retain the same location as they occupy in humans as we know them to be, although it would seem that having the eyes located near the highest point of a body would be a survival advantage? Perhaps God figured this out as well and eliminated foreheads for the inhabitants of one of his later planet projects. I'm giving myself a serious case of the willies.

Will we find them first, or will they find us first? Conventioal logic would dictate that the more advanced civilzation will travel to  discover the less advanced populace. What are the chances of the inhabitants of Earth being the most advanced cilizartion anywhere? Not all that great, the answer would seem to be. I suppose we can hope that there are other more exciting planets far closer to the most advanced civilzations, so that we can escape notice for now.

If the inhabitants of another planet present themselves here, I'm not at all optimistic about the outcome. We have so much difficulty getting along with each other as it is even with just one species running things here. How could we possibly get along with extraterrestrial visitors even if they didn't have their faces all  screwed up by a God who thought as my uncle does and decided to make improvements upon the human face?  The only consolation for me is that I'm not going to live forever. I can always hope that no one shows up from some exotic location in the universe until I've made my final exit.

Why would I even automatically assume that extraterrestrials would have two eyes? 

A Cat Owner

a cat that is not my new cat

I have a cat. She's a gray kitty who has apparently been hanging around a couple of the buildings at my school, though I saw her for the first time today. She's quite friendly, and students have reportedly been feeding her bits of their lunches, but she still has an underfed look about her.

One of my professors was petting her. He felt her stomach and said that she was pregnant. I called a vet and made a late afternoon appointment, then put her in a cat carrier that I purchased when I first arrived here in anticipation of finding a kitty. (I also had cat food, kitty litter, a litter box, and a few toys stored away in my condo for the inevitable cat adoption.)

The veterinarian checked her for a microchip and but didn't find one. I really don't want to steal someone else's cat. I checked Craig's List  and other sources. I'll probably even post a picture of her on Craig's List and on the message board for medical students, but I highly doubt anyone will claim her. She has apparently been around for a couple of weeks. I don't know how I missed seeing her before. Even my brother says he's seen her. My brother likes her, by the way, even though he says he hates cats.

Tomorrow she's going to be spayed, which means, obviously, that she will not be allowed to give birth to her litter of kittens. The veterinarian says she's pretty far along in her pregnancy, but he has no issue with spaying her aand terminating her pregnancy in one fell swoop. He says she's so thin that she probably hasn't had enough to eat, and that poor nutrition, combined with her being very young (the vet thinks she's maybe ten months or so, and it's presumably her first litter) probably would have given her unhealthy babies. Even if they were healthy and I found homes for them, I would essentially be depriving existing cats of those new homes. There are too many unwanted cats around, anyway. I hope my kitty doesn't know what's going on in terms of being pregnant and isn't saddened by the loss of her babies, but regardless, it's something that needs to happen.

I have no clue what my parents will say when I show up for vacation with a cat, but I don't really care all that much. They'll probably be less than thrilled that I'm keeping a cat in the condo, but they never said specifically that we couldn't have any pets in here. They like animals, and I'm sure they'll eventually like her. They're out of the country now, and are in occasional email contact, but I don't feel like spoiling their vacation by bothering them with the cat dilemma. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking with it.  My dog, who lives with my parents when they're not traveling, has no major issue with cats.

I would post an actual picture of her, but I'm trying to maintain some degree of anonymity here, and little things like posting a picture of the actual cat right after I adopt her would chip away at my anonymity. It would be a fluke for one of my fellow students or one of the professors to happen upon the site, but it could happen. Were my cover to be blown, it wouldn't be the end of the world as I know it, since I'm not using the blog to tell the world about a life of crime or even promiscuity that I'm leading or a cheating ring off of which I' profiting. It's simply a matter of having the luxury of using this space as a place to vent or rant on occasion. I know I'm taking my chances, but I try to exercise moderate caution in what I say so it won't likely pop up in google searches that  professors or other school officials run.

My cat's a little hungry because she wasn't allowed to eat after 7:00 p.m. tonight. I'll take her to the vet early tomorrow morning before class, and the vet has agreed to keep someone in the office a bit later than usual so that I may pick her up after class. He seems appreciative both for the business and that I'm helping to keep the stray cat population down.

The kitty does not yet have a name. I'm in no rush to name her. When I think of the perfect name, I'll give it to her. Matthew wants  to name her Antarctica Meringue after our cousin, but unlike my free-spirited aunt and uncle, I'm reluctant to saddle even a cat with such a ridiculous name.  If her owners respond to any adds I post, I'll hand her over, but it's unlikely. I don't really care if they're upset about her being spayed. It's something whoever owned her in the first place should have done, and the original owner would be lucky that I had undertaken it at my own expense. I really don't think, however, that anyone will claim her. I hope no one does. She's a sweet cat.

another cat that is not my cat

Warning!!!!!

This is basically what you may be facing if you visit an E.R. at a teaching hospital in the upcoming months. Stay healthy!

I'm putting everyone here on notice. In the immediate future, my colleagues and I are taking a few hours' worth of workshops on vital signs, after which they (the ubiquitous superpower THEY, never to be identified) are sending my colleagues and me into the emergency room of a hospital somewhere in the northern half of California. The same thing is probably happening in teaching hospitals all over the nation. If you know what is good for you, I would advise you to stay the hell away from teaching hospitals in general and mine in particular if you're feeling not quite up to par and think you may be in need of medical treatment at an emergency room. 

I'm not quite so much worried about myself.  I've watched enough House, MD episodes that I could basically diagnose anyone. I've been doing it for years (much to my father's chagrin) with remarkable accuracy. ( Rule #1: It's NOT lupus.) It's my less-enlightened colleagues for whom I fear. Most of them could not differentiate a case of full-term labor from the measles. 

We won't be actually responsible for your treatment, although our beady eyes will be on you the entire time you receive said treatment.  We will process your intake. If we really screw up a blood pressure or pulse reading, the odds  are that someone will catch it.  Sometimes things don't happen in the manner that is statistically probable, though. Perhaps you will be the one in ten who will NOT be caught by someone smarter and more capable than we are.

Again, it is not I about whom  you really need to be worried. I've been able to take a blood pressure reading with a sphygmomanometer and stethoscope (I even know how to spell them correctly and have known how since elementary school, unlike more than half of my colleagues) since I was nine years old. I won't kill you off before you even see a real doctor.  I cannot, however, make the same guarantee in regard to many if not most of my peers. 

Just to be on the safe side, if you fail to heed my admonition and do find yourself in a northern California E.R. in the next month or two, and you find that your intake is being processed by a medical student who looks greener than Ireland in the month of June, ask for Alexis. It may not be my hospital, and even if it is, I may not be on duty, but it's probably still in your best interests to at least ask. Maybe they'll page me.

P.S. In a real pinch, ask for Matthew. I know that you must be reluctant to do so after some of the stories that I've shared about him, but he does at least know how to take an accurate blood pressure and pulse. I know this because I taught him personally.

P.S.S. I'm praying for the continued good health of readers everywhere, but particularly for those of you who wander through the northern half of California. From what I hear of southern California's medical students, they're even stupider as a group than we are, so you might want to be very careful if you're spending any time there.

The Great Stupidifier - Medical School

For anyone out there with masochistic tendencies who really wants to feel stupid, I recommend medical school.  It's not that my peers, classmates, competitors -- or whatever I would call them -- are doing much or any better than I am. It's just that there's nothing like meeting up with subject matter not available at any of my previous stations in academia or in life.  It highlights just how much I don't know when I study for twelve hours and feel as though I've barely made a dent in the material I  must commit to memory forever or at least for the duration of my professional career.

With academic work I've done in the past, I've known that much of it was not tremendously pertinent to my life. I could learn what I needed to learn to ace a course, and then choose to remember it if it was in anyway useful or interesting, or to forget it if it wasn't. It may be that someday I'll decide that in the grand scheme of things,  something that I'm learning right now really doesn't have much to do with my field of medicine or is otherwise cluttering my brain, and will have the freedom to forget it.

Somehow I doubt that such will be the case. I think the professors are probably speaking the truth when they tell us that learning about how cells form tissues and learning the early principles of molecular biology  and med school anatomy (not to be confused with the most advanced undergrad anatomy course available anywhere, which everyone in the class has taken) lay the foundations for everything we'll ever learn about the scientific aspects of healing.  I think what I'm learning now will have to remain in my brain for the foreseeable future, at least in some dormant form.

Very soon, I will undergo a few hours of clinical instruction regarding the basics of vital signs of the human body. This will enable me to process the basic intake of E.R. patients for just a very small amount of time each week.  It used to be, back in the dinosaur days when my dad went to medical school, that a med school students wouldn't get within shouting distance of a patient until Year # 3 of medical school. All that has changed. I'm not sure precisely why, as it seemed like a pretty good system to me. Perhaps it's because anyone willing to put in the time and effort can learn what's in a book, but for me and for most of the opposition (I don't love to think of those who are studying with me as such, but that's the way it is now if I'm to be honest), what will allow us to succeed or cause us to fail miserably in the field of medicine will be the ability [or inability] to synthesize what we've learned and somehow make sense of it and make use of it in the real world.

I can't speak for the experience of anyone else in the program, but for me, it's like building a bridge. Right now, I'm on one side of a body of water and building out across the water to another piece of land. I've built my bridge maybe a total of three feet into the roughly 10 miles of water I'll need to build it across in order to reach land again. In roughly two weeks, I'm going to take a helicopter or row a little boat or somehow get all the way across to that other section of land and start building the bridge from that side. I'll build on that side for maybe five minutes, then fly or row back to the other side to build again from the original side. I know what's on the very beginning of this side, and I'll know what's on the very start of the bridge on the other side very soon, but my two ends of the bridge are in no way even remotely close to being connected, and I have no clue just what it is that will one day connect them. I don't really know for certain that the ends of the bridge will ever connect.

I'm taking it on faith that all the people who have ever done this before me are not co-conspirators in some ginormously perpetrated hoax and that this is not some bizarre hazing ritual designed to cull the weak, ignorant, and insufficiently dedicated among us.  The anatomy part I get. Yes, a doctor has to know the bones and everything there is to know about each and every one of them.  Most of us knew all the bones before we ever set foot on campus for medical school interviews. Now we get the fun of actually finding them on a real [used-to-be] live human body. (Yes, I did throw up in my first anatomy lab, but I wasn't the only one to do so.)  It's the more abstract learning of cellular and molecular biology that is perplexing me. How what I'm learning in classrooms could ever have anything to do with removing someone's appendix, ridding someone's body of a kidney stone, or even stitching up some child's boo boo, is still very much a mystery to me.

I could take the easy way out.  I could do the job I plan ultimately to do with a mere PhD in biochemistry or even microbiology.  I chose this more difficult path, and now I'm really wondering into what sort of quagmire I've gotten myself.  And, at the end of the day when my head is just short of imploding and they let us out until morning, now I don't even have Judge Alex episodes with which to distract myself. (Curse you, Fox! And you have the audacity to call yourself a real network!)

If it sounds as though I'm treading water and just barely keeping my head above the surface, that's probably not a wholly inaccurate description of my current state.  The only thing really keeping me sane and here is that, while some are better at faking it than I, they're in every bit as much trouble as I am.  The ones who are the least stressed are the few who don't really belong here with the rest of us and haven't yet figured it out. Some of them believe that pass/fail grading means basically everyone passes. Everyone doesn't pass.

I will pass. It seems grim now, but I'll get through it. And I'll do the pre-clerkship portion of medical school in two years, not the three years that the administration is so heavily pushing us to extend it to. I know if it's difficult for me, it's even more difficult for some others.  I can see it in their eyes even if they pretend to be having the time of their lives.  Nobody here is both having fun and passing. It's interesting, but it's not fun. Any one of us who thinks he or she is having fun is going to be out of here after December.

It's accurate except for "What my family thinks." Too many people in my family have been to med school for anyone to believe this.

The Laie Ward X Primary Program Somettime in the 1980's

I APOLOGIZE FOR TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES IN CUTTING AND PASTING THIS!

Note: Jared's dad, Kent, told me the story of my Uncle Scott and the Laie Ward X Primary Program when Scott was three years old and a Sunbeam for Jesus. I decided to share it while I'm still working on my "Judge Alex" eulogy. To the best of my knowledge, this is really the way it happened on that Sunday in the tiny windward/northshore (the Laie chapel sits almost precisely on the spot in Laie where Oahu's terrain turns from windward to North Shore, as evidenced by vegetation) village.

The Primary leaders in the Laie Ward X of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints had all the children seated on the dais (the "stand" in LDS terminology) for the program that they would present in place of a sermon. Adults were seated among the children, but not as many as there ideally should have been, and not in strategic places. The three-year-olds, otherwise known as Sunbeams, were largely monitoring themselves and each other, as they had no adult sitting in particularly close proximity. Their teacher was having a baby that morning and no one had bothered to sit with her class.

Communion (or "The Sacrament" as Mormons like to call it) comes before the sermon or sermons in Mormon churches. Twelve-and thirteen-year-old boys who have been ordained to the priesthood level of "deacon" distribute The Sacrament to the congregation in little plastic trays. (Note: Mormons, unlike Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches, do not believe the bread and wine or water to be the literal body and blood of Christ, but rather to be symbolic representations, which is probably how they justify letting 12-year-olds distribute it. If the sort of occurrence which I will soon recount were to go down in a Catholic or in an Orthodox church, hell would be paid.) A prayer is said, and the deacons pass out the bread. Another prayer is said and the deacons distribute the water, which they use in place of wine or grape juice.

One time I told a Mormon kid at school that a lot of churches use grape juice instead of water in their communion or sacramental rite. The girl at first didn't believe me. When she found out I was telling the truth, she went home after school crying, "It's not fair!" to her mother. The girl's mother, with whom I occasionally come into contact because she and her husband bought a house next door to the home of one of my best friends' parents, still hates me nine years or so after the fact. So much for anything Jesus ever said about forgiving someone not just seven times, but seventy times seven and then some, even when the person who wronged you was a mere ten years old and did so by outing your church for being such cheapskates that they wouldn't come up with a measly ounce of grape juice per communicant. That, however, is a subject for another day's blog.
Usually when it's not a front row, the deacons hand the bread or water tray to the first person in a row or pew, who then passes it on to the next person and so forth, until everyone has partaken of it [Mormon lingo again]. When it's the front row of either the dais or the congregational seating area, the deacons themselves stand before each person, themselves holding the tray.

This particular deacon didn't get the memo about holding onto the tray for the front row. He handed the lightweight plastic bread tray [containing more bread than it would usually hold because of the increased attendance at the day's meeting because of the Primary Program] to the first Sunbeam in the pew and let that kid pass it on to the next. I believe that's about as far down the row as the tray actually made it before it was inevitably dropped, spilling its contents of white Wonder Bread [which some people still actually believe builds strong bodies in twelve ways] all over the floor directly in front of the three-year-olds. The three-year-old Sunbeams all dropped from their seats in the pew to the floor and began grabbing the bread off the carpet and stuffing it into their mouths. Scott was on the floor with all the other Sunbeams, trying to get his fair share of the unexpected bounty, though only three-year-olds or perhaps the underfed dogs perpetually roaming Laie would have considered white Wonder Bread broken into barely bite-sized pieces and scattered all over a floor to be much of a treat.

A little girl who shall be called Cameron [because that's close to but not her actual name, as I do not wish to risk a defamation suit] slapped Scott's hand because he took a particularly large piece of bread she was eyeing for herself. Scott grabbed her braided ponytails and held onto them tightly in one hand, then punched her in the nose with the other. Scott was dexterous even as a three-year-old. The slap and retaliatory punch turned into a knock-down-drag-out wrestling match. All Cameron's siblings jumped out of their seats and were cheering her on, while all Scott's siblings (except for his oldest brother Kent, who was a deacon and was too old to be in the program) sprang from their seats and cheered Scott on. There's supposed to be dead silence during this time when The Sacrament is being passed. There isn't, of course, dead silence in ANY part of a Mormon church service because of all the cranky babies and bored toddlers forced to be there on a given Sunday, but still, it's considered the most sacred time of the meeting, and the World Wrestling Federation Championship for Three-Year-Olds, complete with a shouting audience for each competitor, was going on right in the middle of it.

Scott's mom and dad were not seated anywhere near the front because Scott's dad had been dealing with an issue in the student ward of which he was the bishop. The issue involved girls, so Scott's mom went with him to try to help him mediate the quarrel. The family nanny, a BYU-Hawaii student whose services were being paid for by Scott's mother's inheritance, as one could never afford the services of a nanny on a BYU-Hawaii professor's salary [even if he was on loan from the mother ship BYU-Provo campus and hence receiving a slightly higher salary than that being paid to most of his peers] had driven the children to church in the family's van. On a normal Sunday in an LDS church, the back pews fill up first and those who arrive late get stuck sitting in the front, but on Primary Program Sunday, parents and relatives try to arrive early to get prime seating so that they can see their children and grandchildren as they sing annoying songs slightly off-key and recite with no emotion whatsoever (or, more likely, read not terribly smoothly and in equally monotone voices off tiny slips of paper because they haven't bothered themselves with the memorization) inane lines beamed down to them directly from Primary headquarters in the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City.

The LDS primary organization has a leadership structure, with a president and her two counselors, and teachers for each age group. They were seated somewhat among the children that day, but not very strategically. The Primary Presidency sat in the very back row of seating on the dais, with The President in the middle, her First Counselor to her right, and her Second Counselor to her left (standard Mormon leadership seating formation), slightly removed from the bulk of children. Their seating position was essentially a statement to the ward that they were not mere teachers or other personnel but were, indeed, The Presidency. As was stated earlier, the three-year-old Sunbeams were essentially unsupervised because their teacher was in labor and therefore not at church (the nerve of that woman to go into labor on the morning of The Primary Program!), and it hadn't occurred to anyone else looking upon the unchaperoned three-year-olds that it might be a good idea to place an adult somewhere in their midst. The Primary Presidency was, in the delicate words of Scott's brother Kent, who did have a front-row view because he was one of ther deacons passing the trays that day (but, he would want me to point out, he was NOT the deacon who handed the tray of bread to the three-year-olds to pass to each other until one of them finally dropped and spilled the bread) "sitting with their thumbs up their asses, doing absolutely nothing about it," Kent described in uncharacteristically colorful language for him.

The nanny, even though she wasn't technically a member of that ward because she belonged to a student ward, was filling in for the Primary pianist, who had recently had a baby. On Primary program day in that particular ward, it was traditional for the Primary personnel to be responsible for all the music for worship service that day. The Primary pianist played the organ for the hymns, the Primary chorister [in normal American English dialect, chorister means choir member, but in LDS lingo, the person who leads a group in singing, unless the group is a choir, is called the chorister; don't try to find any logic in it, because it isn't there to be found), conducts the hymns for the congregation, and so forth. The nanny was seated at the organ and couldn't see what was happening on the floor, but could see one of Scott's brothers and his three sisters out of their seats and hollering. Just as Scott's mother was prodding Scott's father to get up and make sure none of their kids were involved in whatever disturbance was occurring, the nanny slipped off the organ bench and down to the front to see for herself what was the problem. She quickly pulled Scott off the top of the little girl (he had her pinned to the floor by one shoulder and was using his free hand to grab any remaining pieces of bread within his reach) and picked him up and held him under one arm. Since Scott was immobilized by his nanny, Cameron made a quick grab for the last of the bread, and then went after Scott, punching him hard in the stomach and hitting the nanny's arm in the process. Scott grabbed one of the Cameron's pigtails. The nanny grabbed Cameron with her other arm and practically threw her over two rows of children seated in pews to the lap of the Primary President. Leaning across two pews full of children to pry Scott's fingers off the Cameron's braided pigtail, the nanny hissed "Don't let her go," at the Primary president, who was probably twice her age and then some, and was married to the division chairman of the department from which the nanny sought to obtain a degree. 

With Scott under one arm, the nanny pointed at every sibling of each of the warriors one at a time with her free hand. "You, sit there!" she hissed at one. "You, over there," she directed another until all the siblings were seated far enough apart from one another to keep the family feud from re-erupting. She even pointed at Kent, he said, and admonished him in a loud whisper, "Don't you DARE even THINK about getting yourself involved in this!" ("I was just standing there holding my own little tray of bread and minding my own business," Kent whined many years after the fact.)

The nanny carried Scott back to her place at the organ bench, sat him in her lap, and ensured that the power source for the organ was turned off. The last thing the meeting needed at that point was an impromptu organ concert from three-year-old Scott. Satisfied that peace was restored, the nanny smiled at the congregation she faced as though it was just a normal day's work. She was all of eighteen years old.

"That's why we have a nanny, " Scott's dad whispered to his mom.

An older man, a humanities professor, seated in the row in front of Scott's mom and dad, turned and warned them in hushed tones, "You'd better be paying her well, because if you're not, the rest of them are going to pool their money and hire her out from under you."

"I hope no one minds if we skip the rest of the Sacrament and go straight to the children's program," the bishop announced from the pulpit. If anyone minded, they certainly didn't express their concerns. The program went off as has nearly every children's program in the history of Mormondom, to be remembered, if at all, only by its very epitomization of mediocrity. The real show that day was the program before the actual program.

how they're supposed to sit in church, but not necessarily the way they really sit

Preface to the Tribute to Judge Alex

This is merely the backstory. I'm saving ther best things I have to say about him until tomorow, or, at the very latest, before I head off to medical school on the 23rd.

Under ordinary circumstances, I'm  the absolute antithesis of  a procrastinator.  Whether it's dishes in the sink, material to be reviewed for a test, a composition that's due in four weeks, or piano accompaniment for a soloist that needs to be played through at least once prior to performance, it  goes against everything in my nature to save the job to be done until later. I'd wash the dishes before they'd even been used if doing so would accomplish anything. I  once went so far as to write an essay before the topic was assigned, making my best guess as to what the assigned topic might be, just in case I might be right and have a jump on the assignment.

Yet I'm  guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of procrastination when it comes to writing my personal eulogy, for lack of a better word, to the TV program Judge Alex.  I thank God and anyone else responsible for his continued well-being that it's only the TV show Judge Alex and not the star of the show himself, Alex Ferrer, that I'm eulogizing. Though the name of the show and the person hosting it have become synonymous in the minds of many, while the show is dead and gone [may it rest in peace] the man in the black robe 
continues to turn up on my TV. This very night, in fact, I saw him discussing the Daniel Pistorius case with Megyn Kelly on Fox News Channel's The Kelly File.

It occurred to me today that one obstacle to starting this rather daunting project is the back story, which threatens to take up more space than the actual tribute to Judge Alex itself.  (Note the  italics, which indicate that I'm referring to the TV program as opposed to the person. I'm not calling Alex Ferrer himself an it. I'm rude, but not that rude. To the best of my knowledge, Judge Ferrer's gender has never been in question.) While how I came across Judge Alex, and, in perhaps a sense, to know the man Alex Ferrer himself, is a part of the story, I didn't want the prequel to overtake the main event.  Additionally, there's that ever-present elephant in the room: we all know of the tendency with anything I write -- even something seemingly so unrelated as a research paper focusing upon sexual equality among pygmies dwelling in the Ituri rainforest, to be consumed by the inherent sub-theme of all my writings and, for that matter, of my life, which is the  almost unfathomable weirdness of those to whom I am related. 

The best way to keep such from happening, I decided, was to offer a preface or an introduction to the Judge Alex tribute. Perhaps doing such will  allow me get through the whos, whats, whens, wheres, whys, and hows of my relationship (I thought calling it a relationship might be a bit of a stretch, though the judge himself acknowledged it as such) with Judge Ferrer in order to proceed to the central theme in a more timely manner than might otherwise have happened . . . 

I began watching Judge Alex as a fourteen-year-old high school junior.  The circumstance by which I stumbled across the channel airing the show was of a most flukish nature. 

It was winter vacation. Ninety-nine out of one hundred parents would have considered their fourteen-year-old twins to be old enough to be at home alone for the daytime while their parents worked, but my parents are of a different archetype than are most of their parenting peers. My mother, as an educator in our school district, should, theoretically have had the same days off that the students in the district had.  She was, however, working  through part of her vacation with two other administrators on writing a grant to fund our district's teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease prevention program. The irony was not lost on her that simultaneously, as she was writing a document to prevent negative consequences associated with teen sex,   the behaviors she was writing a grant to prevent could be occurring in her own home even as she wrote. It was unlikely that Matthew or I would have had anything too hot and heavy going on with  members of the opposite sex (or, for that matter, with members of the same sex) since neither of us was anything resembling an early-bloomer, but had we each invited a few friends over, nature might have run its course, and God knows what the outcome might have been. For that matter, in my mother's paranoid version of events, one of us might have decided to throw a RAVE at 10:00 a.m on a Tuesday in our home, which, I'm sure, would have been terribly well-attended, and which would have negated the benefits of the anti-substance abuse education grant my mom planned to write during spring vacation. Regardless  of the specificity of concerns my parents (mostly my mother; my father mostly did as he was told when it came to my mother's concerns about our potential bad-acting) might have had concerning what Matthew and I might have chosen to do with our spare time had we been unsupervised, it wasn't going to happen. We had a babysitter, who happened to be my dad. He did what little of his work he could do at home. The remainder of his time, he just harassed us.

TV time, which while school was in session was heavily restricted, was monitored considerably more leniently during vacation. At some point one afternoon in the days before Christmas, I flipped on the TV to see Maury Povich materialize on the screen. It was a rather bizarre episode [I believe it was a repeated episode, though that's neither here nor there] featuring a stage full of morbidly obese babies and toddlers. Every race, color, and creed appeared to be represented on the stage. Something about the macabre nature of the episode prevented me from changing the channel. 

I recall there having been a child who was roughly two-and-one-half years old who was so overweight that she could neither sit up nor pull herself up. The only position she was capable of assuming was one of lying prone or supine on whatever surface upon she was placed unless she was propped. Her sole mode of locomotion was rolling from one place to another.

I also recall a baby who could not be lifted by his mother, a woman  of normal build who did not appear to suffer from particular weakness, nor was it expressed that she suffered from any sort of a debilitating condition. The child's father didn't lift him with great ease. They put the kid on a scale right there on the stage, and he, at the ripe old age of six months, weighed in at seventy-five pounds.

Then they spoke to the parent of one of the rotund babies. This child was right around the twelve month mark. I think he was a fifty-five pounder, which was almost thin by the standards of many of the babies on the stage that day. A panel including Maury, a pediatrician, and a registered dietician questioned the mother of the one-year-old about the child's breakfast on an ordinary day. I have to give the mother credit for honesty, as I would never have admitted it had that been my child's typical breakfast [nor could I have afforded it without resorting to a life of crime]. (Note: I'm quoting the mother. Her syntax is indicative of a particular ethnicity. I'm not trying to poke fun at how she expressed herself. I am somewhat inappropriately poking fun, sad as it is, at what she thought was appropriate to feed her baby. Regarding my depiction of her dialect, however, it's not intended to be funny. I'm just restating her words as she spoke them.)

"I fix him a dozen eggs for breakfast." (It reminded me vaguely of the song Gaston sings in Beauty and the Beast except that what Gaston sang about eating paled in comparison to what this baby was fed.) "He usually have a half a loaf of bread for toast, and I don't put no more than a cube of butter on all his toast, which ain't that much with that much toast. He like to have that white Karo syrup on his toast. He have a half a gallon of chocolate milk. I keep pouring it in his bottle until the half gallon is empty. They make them baby bottles too small. Even if he want more, he don't get no more unless he take regular milk with Nestle Quik in it. He have frosted flakes," she began.

"How much frosted flakes?" a member of the panel asked.

"Just a box," the mother answered. 

"One of those miniature boxes that comes in a variety pack?" the registered dietician asked hopefully, approximating the size of a miniature  box with her hands.

"No, a regular box," the mother answered, motioning with her hands to indicated a box about a foot high. "And he have Hostess doughnuts -- the white powdered sugar ones."

"How many?" the pediatrician asked, sounding  almost afraid to hear the answer.

"Just one," answered the mother.

"Just one doughnut?" queried the pediatrician.

"No," clarified the mother. "Just one box. And sometimes he eat cinnamon rolls too. Those Pillsbury Dough boy kind. If I don't have time to cook 'em for him, he eat 'em raw out of the can."

By this time my brother Matthew had wandered into the family room and was mesmerized by what he was seeing and hearing. Matthew himself was known for an ability to consume huge quantities of food without any evidence ever appearing on his body. "Jeez!" he said. "You all say I'm a pig, and it would take me a week to eat what this baby eats in a day!"

"That's just his breakfast,  Matthew," I explained.

"Holy Mother of God!" he exclaimed. (Mom wasn't home, so such language wasn't an issue.)

The mother continued. "And he like to drink a jug or two of that Sunny Delight drink. I think it's just real orange juice, but he won't drink real orange juice. I don't know why." She had a puzzled look on her face.

"Probably because  real orange juice is missing the  30% or whatever of  high fructose corn syrup that's in Sunny Delight," the registered dietician commented, shaking her head.

The pediatrician spoke up. "Ma'am, do you realize what you're doing to your child's health by feeding him in this way?"

The mother became defensive. "If my baby want to eat," she said in clipped syllables and in a hostile tone, "my baby can eat."  She punctuated her statement by folding her arms.

Meanwhile, Matthew scooped  a large bowl of ice cream and covered it with so much chocolate syrup that  a person who hadn't seen the concoction under construction could not have discerned that there was ice cream under the chocolate syrup. "Didn't you just have ice cream about an hour ago, Matthew?" my dad asked.

"Forty-five minutes, " Matthew corrected him as he shoved a spoonful of the ice cream / chocolate syrup  mix into his mouth.

"It's like an hour until dinnertime," my dad complained.

"If your baby want to eat, " I told my dad, "your baby can eat."

My dad groaned.

"Alexis, either change the channel or turn the TV off," my dad ordered.

"Why?" Matthew and I responded in unison.

"It's just getting to the good part," Matthew added.

"Because just listening to it is making me sick," my dad answered. "You heard me. Turn it off or change the channel. Those are your two options."

I reached for the remote control and clicked up one channel, which landed me onto Judge Judy. "Great," my dad groaned again. "The lady with the shrill Brooklyn accent. I'll have a headache in five minutes."

"We'll turn it back to Maury," Matthew offfered.

"We wouldn't want you to get a headache," I added.

"No, I'll take the shrill Brooklyn lady over the morbidly obese babies who drink Sunny Delight by the jug," he conceded, thoroughly disappointing both of us.

I don't even remember the specifics of the case Judge Judy was adjudicating except that it involved an engagement ring. One party or the other brought the ring to court, and Judge Judy was examining it, twirling it around in her fingers and looking at it in the light. She looked pointedly at the young  man who must have been the prospective groom. "It's not exactly the Hope Diamond, is it?" she asked in a most snarky tone. I felt bad for the young man, who had bought the ring he could afford. What did Judge Judy expect him to do? Go out and rob a bank so he could purchase a diamond that would have been considered minimally acceptable by her standards? Get someone to co-sign for him so he could access credit to buy a larger diamond, and then promise to pay the person back with his tax refund?

"Did you hear that?" I asked my dad. I thought of the diamond my own mom wore on her left hand. It wasn't very large, particularly by Judge Judy's standards.  It was all my dad could afford at the time he proposed to her, while he was still in medical school. She now wears a much larger diamond on her right hand, but the small one on her left ring finger is the one that has the greater sentimental value if only a fraction of the extrinsic value of the one on her right ring finger.

"Pretty hard not to hear it at the volume she speaks," my dad answered.

"That wasn't very nice of her," I expressed my opinion.

"No, it wasn't," my dad answered. "I'm glad you caught that.
I'm not saying the shrill Brooklyn accent [I'm sure he knew her name, or at least the "Judge Judy" portion of it, but he refused to admit to it or to use it]  is a bad person, but I don't think she has any clue as to how at least 90% of the world's population lives. Not everyone had a dentist father to pay her college and law school tuition. Either that, or she knows better but is playing a role she's being paid to play." he paused. "Either way it doesn't speak well for her." He paused again. "Alexis, you don't have to watch this show, either. If you have to watch TV, why don't you see what else is on."

I scrolled up the channels until I came across I man I hadn't seen before, a robe-clad man seated at a bench with a gavel in his right hand. Another TV court show, I thought to myself. It seemed that there were getting to be quite a few of the genre available for the public's viewing pleasure, particularly if one had cable, Direct TV, or satellite.  The man's rather large face seemed to take up most of the TV screen, or perhaps it was just the camera angle. He did have flawless skin, though -- skin that even TV cosmetics couldn't make to appear THAT good. He had lovely pearly-white teeth as well -- the kind my aunt had paid five thousand dollars in endeavor to procure but still hadn't quite managed to obtain. (I know how much the procedure cost her because she "borrowed" the money from my dad eight years ago and had yet to repay a cent. My dad's philosophy on lending money to relatives, particularly to ones of which he is less than fond, is often to go ahead and let them have the money they ask for. Then they avoid you like the plague. It's a small price to pay, he says, not to have to deal with them.) The judge's flawless skin was slightly olive-toned, and his hair, depending upon the way the light shone upon it, was either very dark brown or black. The man  looked oddly familiar, though I couldn't hazard a guess as to why.

"Dad, look at this guy. Have you seen him before?" I thought maybe he'd been on a TV series or perhaps had been a newscaster. 

My dad looked up from his work at the kitchen counter and stared at the TV for a moent. "He looks a lot like Uncle Jerry. He's probably Cuban-American, too." Once my dad mentioned it, I could see the resemblance.

My Uncle Jerry is not my uncle either by  biology or marriage but has been my dad's best friend since seventh grade, and I have always considered him my uncle. He was the obstetrician of record at my c-section delivery who signed my birth certificate, though my dad, also an MD, was the one who actually removed me from my mother's womb. Uncle Jerry took my brother Matthew out immediately afterward -- a fact I've never let my brother forget.  My brother may be bigger and everyone who doesn't know us may assume he's at least three years older than I, but birth certificates don't usually lie (unless you're one of those birther people  who refuse to believe that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii) and I am the older twin.

I started to scroll up to another channel. My dad stopped me. "Wait a minute" he requested. "Let's watch this for a sec."

I don't even remember that much about the case. I think it might have had something to do with whether or not a boy had permission to use his girlfriend's parents' ATV, and whose fault it was that it was wrecked when he was riding it. I can't even remember if the judge ruled in favor of the boy or the girl's parents, who were suing him for damages. What I remember was that the judge had a quick sense of humor and wasn't above taking an occasional verbal shot at a litigant who really opened himself or herself up to it, but, in general, tended to be  self-deprecating in his humor and to far more often make jokes at his own expense than at anyone else's. He had an easy ongoing banter with his bailiff, who was at that time a Houston police officer named Victor. The show was at the time filmed in Houston because the judge, who lived in Miami, had children and didn't want to give up an entire day of being with them each direction on flights from Miami to the shooting location.

My dad had wanted to watch because he was trying to identify the judge's regional accent. (The judge has no foreign accent.) After a few moments, my dad had accomplished his goal of identifying the judge's place of origin, or at least where he had grown up. "He's from Miami or at least south Florida. You can change the channel now if you want, but not either to Maury Povich or to the shrill Brooklyn lady."

"That's OK," I said. "I'll watch this."  I didn't realize it, but it was the very beginning of a nearly seven-year obsession.