Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Angel and the piglet

In an earlier post, I mentioned an encounter with a fetal pig that put me off pork for some 20 years. I had so many incredulous responses that I thought I should tell the story, you know, maybe garner some sympathy.

My 8th grade Life Sciences class was taught by the 9th grade Line coach, Coach Tversky. Coach T was short, round, and extremely funny. He called us "mullets" (the fish, not the haircut), and was generally well-prepared to teach the subject. Made it very interesting. During second semester, we hit dissection. Think Springtime in Texas, and carving up dead things.

We started off slowly with earthworms. Can you really dissect an earthworm? Why yes, yes you can.

This didn't bother me at all. I'd been baiting my own hook since I was eight. Kinda cool to see an earthworm's innards. Next up was a frog. A little gooier, but still not a problem. We're making our way up the food chain, one type of bait at a time.

Then we did a fish, at this time we started thinking Coach T was just catching stuff in his backyard and bringing it in for us to cut up and keep us busy. We hit mid-March and Spring Break with the promise of something bigger waiting for us when we got back. I was not prepared.

We could smell it walking down the hall the first Monday after break. Sickly sweet, a combination of Coach T's German sausage lunch and formaldehyde. I can close my eyes and still bring up the memory of formaldehyde. It has a very distinct odor. And it sinks into everything, your clothes, your skin, your hair. You can smell and taste it hours after class, and after a few days, you can't get rid of it. We walked into class and found trays of fetal pigs laying on the lab tables. Unlike the other specimens that were plentiful, we didn't get our own pigs, thank God. We doubled up with a lab partner, two to a pig. My partner was Beth, daughter of a surgeon, ambitions of becoming a doctor herself, scalpel-happy Beth. She was delighted to do the cutting while I did the diagramming and labeling. We made a great team. Monday was a just get to know your pig day; Tuesday we opened the thoracic cavity. She cut and removed organs, I diagrammed and labeled. Wednesday, abdominal cavity, same routine.


Okay, Friday is test day, that means I just have to get through Thursday and I'm home free, right? RIGHT??? So Thursday morning, I'm standing by Petunia (yeah, she was a little girl pig) waiting for Beth. The bell rings, no Beth. Tardy bell, no Beth. This girl is NEVER late, and I'm sweating, Thursday is brain day, and I haven't cut on anything with a brain. Shit.

Coach T ambled over grinning, looked at me over the pig and said the words I dreaded, "Beth is sick, you're up." Double shit. I haven't even touched the thing yet and now I have to untie two of it's little hooves, flip it over, and cut out it's little brain. I'm not sure why the pig bothered me so much. I guess it was cuter than the worm and frog; it was a mammal. Still had it's umbilical cord attached. But it's a little baby pig and now I have to cut out it's little baby pig brain.

So there I was, Vicks Vapo-Rub stuffed up my nostrils, hands shaking and a nauseous sweat rolling down my face. I made the first cut through the derma, tough, pickled with the formaldehyde. and took a deep breath. Wrong move, gag. The second move was supposed to be cutting through the skull by chipping away with a pair of sharp scissors. Note: Do NOT give me anything sharp. I was chipping, chipping, chipping and the brain came into view.


I gagged, I jabbed, I cut the membrane surrounding the brain, the brains started leaking out. According to Coach T, it was just a little bit, but I remember it as a virtual Mt. Vesuvius of gray matter. The cold nauseous sweat turned hot, my ears started buzzing and my eyes started blurring. Then I was out. Cold. Face first in the pig brain.

When I came to, I was on the floor, pig brains and puke (Coach T said he couldn't tell if I puked first or passed out first or if it was simultaneous) was matting my Aqua Net stiffened bangs and Coach T was grinning over me. "Nice swan dive, Chumbley. Go see the nurse, you're done for the day."

I gathered my books and stumbled down the hallway to the nurse's office to get checked out for the day. Back then (actually my folks still live there), I lived across the football field from the junior high. I walked to and from school every day, rain or shine. Boo hoo. But that day, I would have paid anything for a ride home. When I walked in, Poppy was home for lunch and offered to make me a fried SPAM sandwich.

And that's why I didn't eat pork for 20 years.



25 comments:

Cederq said...

Oh Angel, you would not do well in an A & P class, I dissected a pregnant 30 year old woman. She died of a heroin OD. This was for my nursing class. My lab partner and me even had to dissect the fetus... because he was in her. You wouldn't have made the class...

hiswiserangel said...

Cederq, I made money in college coloring the athletes' A&P coloring books. That's as close as I got. I took geology.

Stretch said...

Dissection class was first class after, yes, lunch.
Face masks heavily laced with either Vicks or clove oil did wonders.

Akatsukami said...

I could tell you about the time I had to perform a cardiectomy on a live (well, it was a live at the start of the process) rat in a biology lab, but I don't want to upset you unnecessarily.

JeremyR said...

When I was in Jr high, I dissected every thing that died on our farm. That included kittens, gophers, you pick. I was very interested in becoming a doctor. Heck, I had the handwriting part down to an unreadable science.

Granny said...

Lunch immediately followed our tenth grade biology class. A graphic full color film on the life cycle of the common house fly was on offer that day. Bell rings and off we innocent possums trooped to the lunch room. Beef gravy and rice was the offering de jour. We all trooped out as a unit. The rice looked too much like maggots to be able to bear it. Like you, I didn't eat rice for about 20 years. I feel your pain, we only had to deal with slimeys. I don't think the pig experience would have endeared me to porcine dissection either, but I do loves my bacon.

hiswiserangel said...

Granny, bacon is what eventually broke me.

loaded4bear said...

I'm on the opposite cycle. I survived dissection, A&P classes, EMT school and being an Army grunt. As I've matured ( yeah, I'm old now ) I've become more and more squeamish. I'm ok with blood, but we will NOT be having the discussion about icky, oozy, nasty crap while eating.

hiswiserangel said...

I'm a mom, I've been peed on, pooped on, puked on, bled on. It's hard to gross me out now.

Anonymous said...

Bless you Wise Angel One...so sorry for your unfortunate experience....my dad owned a small packing house/locker plant in East Texas from the time I was 6 til I was 14. Used to walk there after school (think late 50's, early 60's) and before they put me to work in the cut em up and wrap em up room, I used to hang out on the kill floor for hours watching Finis Cooper (an artisan with a skinning knife) dispatch and eviscerate various sizes and ages of calves and pigs. I have seen more livestock innards than most vet students. Always fascinated me, and when I happen to open up a deer, or quail or whatever today, it still is more "hmmmm" than "yuk"....BTW, when I was hanging out or working at the plant, I used to always work up a horrendous, carnivorous appetite.....

vaquero viejo

Cederq said...

Vaquero Viejo, when I worked in surgery, the staff would get horrendous carnivorous appetites too! All that open flesh and fresh blood would get your saliva glands overtime and your stomach growling because of that fresh meat. Angel as a nurse and a dad I too have been pooped, peed, puked, sprayed with warm mothers milk and have had various bodliy fluids sprayed on me...

Hawken Cougar said...

Jeepers, starting to think that you are coming out of the closet as a libertarian muslim!

Anonymous said...

Vaquero viero... Do you have to comment on every g'dam post here?

I stop reading as soon as i see your name

Anonymous said...

Very well written Angel, it sounds like you weren't cut out to be a surgeon. Thats okay - we have lots of surgeons, but we have only one Angel.

You keep on being awesome !

hiswiserangel said...

Anon, if that is your real name, this is MY blog and these are MY friends. You're always welcome here until you disrespect one of them.
Angel

Cederq said...

You tell 'em Angel, it deserve a spanking!

Anonymous said...

Anon of July 12, 2017 at 9:24PM (since you have no other name)

"I stop reading as soon as I see your name."

IS THAT A PROMISE???


vaquero viejo

Winston Smith said...

Hilarious, but I feel for your distress.
Thanks for sharing that story.

wirecutter said...

A fucking spam sandwich..... damn, I love your Poppy.

hiswiserangel said...

He loves you too, probably more than he loves me.

Anonymous said...

Until you have stood in a cannery butcher room knee deep in blood fins and fish heads cleaning 20,000 lb. of fish an hr. "gross" is only a concept. On a hot day the smell can't even be imagined. On a "busy" day we had to stop every few hrs. so the small front loader could clear the floor. --Ray

JayNola said...

I think the most oppressive gick I ever had was while doing a repair survey on a pogey boat that had caught fire. Untold tons of rotting tiny fish, that special burnt smell you only get from diesel and furnishings, and a September day on the gulf coast.

Anonymous said...

interesting and entertaining

when i was a kid i had friends who had dead stock removal business.
they processed all out for dogfood by hand. didn't matter how bloated
and rotten it was it was all processed ..

i didn't have to do the dissection thing at school i got kicked out of that class after i took pictures to school and showed them to the teacher who got sick a threw up all over the place in front of the class making some of the kids throw up while i stood there laughing my ass off. dad was called to school and he laughed at them too then we went and got something to eat ;-)



livin to ride

pdwalker said...

Wow. Quite the stories here, especially the one right before this one.

Anonymous said...

My dear Angel, I'm totally sympathetic, but still incredulous, because bacon.

Looking back at that earlier post's comments, Wirecutter and I are the only incredulous responses I see, so I'm honored if I helped prompt your story.

It's an awesome story. I used to go to high school dissection class with a sandwich in one hand and a scalpel in the other. Of course being a high schooler, I did it just to gross everyone out. It worked!

At the end of the semester, we dissected baby sharks. The teacher ran his finger along the reproductive system, until it burst and sprayed the girls with formaldehyde-soaked milt. Highlight of the year!

Unfortunately, like loaded4bear, I've become more squeamish with age.

More great stories in these comments, made me laugh, thanks everyone!