I have always been wildly interested in science. I could not get enough of nature shows and documentaries. Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom was a weekly favorite, but almost any show that shared insights into the natural world were a great find. My favorite books were a set of encyclopedias my cousin's had that showed the various stages of life on earth. I poured over those books as well as our own set of encyclopedias at home, especially anything on snakes or other animals around our neighborhood.
I remember watching one show that was going into great detail about how the human heart worked. It said that heart muscle was unique. Other muscle would contract only if the nerves leading to our brain were intact. Heart muscle was different. All it needed to contract was contact with other actively contracting heart muscle. They showed a microscopic view of one heart muscle cell contracting and then another heart muscle cell that was still. They then touched the two cells together and both cells began to contract in rhythm with each other.
I filed this information along with all the other information I was collecting about the world. In my brain was a whole bunch of space devoted to interesting tidbits of knowledge. The unfortunate thing about all that knowledge I was collecting was that it was in no way organized. I could read about something or watch a show and if I was asked to tell you what I had read or what I had watched I wouldn't be able to remember it in a way that I could describe. My mind had absorbed the information but it was not at my beck and call. The information would just rise and fall of its own accord and suddenly I would be thinking about how snakes shed their skin or in the next minute how seeds were pollinated. Sometimes events would occur and a relevant piece of information would come floating to the top but it was usually trivial in nature. For example at a family gathering when my aunt was startled by a whole bunch of daddy long legs crawling out from under a bench I was able to say "Daddy long legs aren't really spiders," which did nothing to stop her from freaking out. "I don't care what they are," she shrieked, "Just don't let them crawl on me."
So there I was filled with abundant, but functionally useless information. It was sort of like a savings account that I could put money into, but couldn't withdraw money from. It was there and it was mine, but I couldn't consciously access it. Occasionally this savings account would randomly spit out money but this would be like money from the game Monopoly - useless except for a vary narrow window called playing the Monopoly game. In this game having a lot of Monopoly money means you can buy all sorts of things and play the game well but it does nothing for you in any useful, real life sort of way. Unless playing the game of Monopoly somehow teaches you how to deal with the crushing disappointment that comes from dealing with high rent or exorbitant taxes and fees. All I know is that each time my sister and my cousins and I played the game we would get very tired and very angry at each other. That was quite similar to the effect my knowledge had on others. They would get very tired of me and sometimes angry. This was because my wealth of knowledge was useless except for a very narrow window of application. This was rather dramatically demonstrated in the following incident.
We were on a fishing trip and my sister and I were on shore checking out some crab lines that we had baited and so far had not produced much result. We all had caught several fish and since it was the end of the day my father was cleaning the fish in preparation for us leaving. Two of the fish we had caught were sheep's head which were a fairly large fish between 10 to 20 inches. These were a bony, robust fish with black stripes on a silver body. One of their most distinctive features were the stubby teeth they had, so when my father beheaded the fish I took it and was examining its mouth.
My sister came over to me with something in her hand. "Look," she said, "It's a fish's heart." In her hand she held a very small red organ that was completely still. "It isn't beating," I noted. My brain began to itch and I felt compelled to reached down into the fish guts my father had just cleaned and find the heart of the sheep's head. It was still beating. I touched the beating heart to the one in my sister's hand and that heart began to beat again. She was shocked. "How did you know to do that?!" she exclaimed. I just looked at her because I knew she had watched the same program with me. "That program that talked about hearts," I said. "But how did you know that was going to work?" she asked. Well, the truth be told I had not known it would work, it was my unconscious mind that had known. However, I didn't want to tell her that since she was so impressed with me. Usually she was the complete opposite of impressed by me and seldom missed an opportunity to let me know. "I just knew," I mumbled, but really it didn't matter what I said because she was busy showing my father and mother the two beating fish hearts and telling them I was going to be a surgeon or scientist or something.
Now I was happy to revel in any positive regard from my sister, but I am not sure her words were taken all that seriously considering how morbid it was for her to be carrying around a couple of disembodied hearts. Beating or not it was sort of creepy. Luckily my parents talked her down. "Yes," they said, "It is very interesting and yes, how fascinating and how typical that your sister would know how to do something so very strange and icky, but wouldn't it be better if you put the fish guts down now?" Thankfully, the hearts eventually stopped beating so my sister finally abandoned them. It would have been fine if she had just left it at that, but later when some friends of hers were visiting she recounted the tale again. Now instead of them marveling about how smart I was they were grossed out by the whole ordeal. They began to speculate on whether or not I would become some sort of mad scientist. When they left my sister was over being impressed with me and went back to her old tormenting ways. From then on whenever I did anything remotely smart she said it was more proof that I was going to be another Dr. Frankenstein.
This did not stop me from learning and I continued to add to the pile of knowledge in my brain as I still do today. So far, I don't feel compelled to create an underground laboratory and conduct experiments on reanimating the dead. However, if you come to me with a fish in cardiac arrest I might be able to help you.
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