Dissection

 

Don’t remember if it was junior high or high school, but I imagine it was high school for us kids to handle sharp objects although we had shop class with power tools in junior high. It wasn’t elementary school with rounded point plastic scissors and white paste.

Anyway it was science class. I don’t think it was called chemistry but it did have the periodic table of chemical elements. It was a room with long flat tables (instead of desk) and beakers and vials of liquids that when mixed together became a magic show.

There were no goggles or special ventilation so the room smelled like a hospital. We didn’t have gloves but I think we borrowed aprons from the home economics class.

There was talk about plants and photosynthesis and pollination (no, there were no sex ed. classes). We just wanted to know how to make bombs or drink it and get drunk.

On this day we were about to learn about the internal anatomy…. Of a frog.

A living frog.

 The croaker hadn’t croaked yet so it was still hopping about trying to figure out why everything smelled funny. This is a guy who lives in a swamp but this school classroom was not a preferable place to be. If he/she had any idea of what was about to happen I don’t know. They would sit there in that froggy squat and bulging neck looking at you with those big eyes saying, “Knee Deep, Knee Deep”.  

Now there were books with layered graphics on plastics and gigantic charts with arrows and circles and descriptions of what was where, but our class assignment was to kill a frog.

Just to make the process more acceptable, we had to choose a partner for the assignation. Not being a team player and rarely chosen I hoped to bypass and just sit back and watch, but no, I had to participate. One of the girls who found the frogs icky were repulsed but were assigned to as partners in crime.

As I recall, we had to spread this reptile on a corkboard covered in wax paper and crucify it. When you lay a frog on it’s back they can face you. I don’t remember any blood as we spiked long pins into each limb to avoid escaping it limited time life on earth, thanks to some chemistry students.

Some of the class may have enjoyed what was coming next. Others were just following instructions from the teacher. Yet others were not looking forward to exterminating this amphibian but we had to pass the class to move onto graduation.

I think we used x-acto knives to start the incision because scalpels are really, really sharp and there would have been lawsuits.

We peeled back the stomach skin with tweezers but probably used our fingers too and we pinned back for what was about to come the disembowelment of this still breathing creature.

We were told to poke around at all the organs exposed to us to view the liquids pumping through this conscripted volunteer to inevitable execution.

Don’t remember the details of removal of the carcass but it was probably pulling out the pins and scraping the remains into the trashcan.

The object of the class was to teach anatomy but what a waste of a helpless frog to be plucked from home and executed for our pleasure.

Perhaps the object of the class was to teach young white kids they can kill another creature without remorse for science.

I’m not a doctor (and I don’t play one on TV) but I can fact check what a medical professional diagnosis to see if the colon is connect to the thigh bone or not.

I am a body donor. After I stop breathing (hopefully not during the above dissection) take whatever parts and pieces you want. I don’t need them anymore. If you can slice and dice my remains to forward medical knowledge I’m all for it. I donated my wife. There are no ashes or graves with headstones only family members will know until they forget.