Head Trauma and Mad Science

There are two fish in a tank.
One turns to the other and says, “Do you know how to drive this thing?”


Wow, almost two years since my last post. Sorry about that. Stuff got busy, and I got writer's block. I'll try and make it up to you in the future. Here goes...

You know who Igor is? Of course you do. Think of all those monster movies where the scientist has a hideous little assistant with a speech impediment. “Yeth, mathter. I thall prepare the monthter.” My very favorite portrayal was Marty Feldman's character in Young Frankenstein*. Picture him in your head. We'll come back to him later.

As I may have mentioned before, I'm kind of a big guy. At 6'4” tall, I have become quite the expert in hitting my head on things. If I had a dollar for every time I bumped my noggin, I'd be swimming in loot. This summer, the house my wife and I rented had a pot rack hanging over the trash can. I'd have to check my records to be sure, but I believe I hit my head an average of 1.6 times per day.

Lately, I have been bashing my melon against the ceiling in my very own basement. Most of the space is very nearly tall enough for me. However, it is sprinkled with beams, light bulbs, vents, and various and assorted non-incorporeal fixtures. For the last couple days, I've been working down there on some kitchen improvement projects, and all that banging and dodging caused me to have a revelation.

Remember Igor? We talked about him a couple paragraphs ago. Close your eyes and picture the character in question. Got him? What did you see? Hump on his back? Hunched over? Weird shuffling walk? ... What else? I bet he's small. If the guy you're picturing straightened up, how tall would he be? Maybe 5'4”? Well my friend. I think we may have been imagining this guy wrong all along. I think Igor was a rather tall dude. That was my revelation.

As I moved about the basement, gathering tools, sawing, sanding, spraying, assisting behind the scenes whilst my beautiful and talented wife did the major cosmetic stuff, I noticed something. To avoid whanging my dome against the multitude of potential mishaps strewn about the ceiling, I had to hunch over a bit. I also had to do this weird limping shuffle thing, both to avoid the detritus that abounds on a basement floor in the midst of a renovation, and also to avoid raising the level of my noodle to bashing heights.

Igor wasn't a small misshapen castoff from society. The guy was probably an All-Transylvanian linebacker or something. Then he goes and gets a grad-assistant research job with Dr. I-hope-osha-doesn't-notice, and a decade later, there he is: hump, limp, and an email that says that the good doctor will get around to looking at the latest draft of his dissertation just as soon as he gets back from the EEMSA** conference next week.

BAM! Get your noodle around that one. Looking back, this “revelation” looks a lot more like the symptoms of a concussion. Whatever. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm going to go have a lie down and an ice pack.






*Marty didn't have the speech impediment thing going on. For a good example of that, check out some of Terry Pratchet's Discworld books.

**Eastern European Mad Science Association