I Read Dead People

Oh, yes, yesterday was a much better day! I had a meeting with a community schools coordinator and just loved speaking with him. He’s a lovely guy… totally passionate about what he’s doing… and he and I talked about different ways to put the right people together to move forward in creating better parent involvement. I loved this guy and speaking with him put me in a terrific mood.

Since I was in the vicinity, I decided to stop by Barnes & Noble to pick up a couple of books I’ve wanted to read. S and I watched the movie, “The Prestige” the other night and really liked it. I gave it to my mom and she liked it, too. We both decided we wanted to read the book but it had something like 17 holds (and only two copies) on it at the library. I decided WTF and purchased it. My mom’s going to read it first. I hope it’s as good, if not better, than the movie.

I have such a strange Pavlovian response when I go into any Barnes & Noble. I flinch when the phone rings and cringe beyond the three rings mark. I scowl when I see five employees, standing around in the customer service desk, talking amongst themselves, and doing their damndest to not have to acknowledge me. I say, “Excuse me…” with a slight punch of disdain and then ask if they can tell me the name of an author. I actually say, “You shouldn’t have to look this one up…” and notice the look I get from the bookseller, which clearly says, “How would you know that, biotch?” Well… I decide to not tell her how I would know that just ‘cause of that look. Later, I do a sideways, passive-aggressive thing when I say, “Yeah, so, Julie is your DM now, huh? She used to be my DM, too. She‘s very nice but tough.” and I notice the small amount of “uh-oh” in the bookseller’s fearful look of “Who in the hell are you?” back at me.

For some reason, this gives me a tremendous amount of pleasure. It’s almost… validating for me. I don’t know why I have to go to this place but I do. It’s so… so… neener-neener. It just drives me nuts to see this stuff happening having once been the person in the hot seat of performance management. Although, I will give this particular store props for their merchandising; it was clean, alphabetized, and the tables/displays were crisp. Now, if they could just work on that customer service deal…

I’m finally going to read a book that I’ve wanted to read for a long, long time. I picked up “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” yesterday and am chomping at the bit to read it. To quote the back cover, “… an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem.” Not exactly CSI stuff but my kind of fun nonetheless.

My mom used to work at the medical school and I can remember being a kid and once going into a room where there was a cadaver lying covered on a steel table. I have no recollection of why I was in this room or where it was exactly (it seemed very dungeon-like to me) but I do remember seeing the cadaver’s shriveled hand and the fingernails which seemed like they had just kept on growing postmortem. I now know that is not the truth of it but I’ve always been curious about what happens to these cadavers in places like medical schools, research facilities, etc…

I am, in fact, an organ donor and would definitely prefer to donate my (gnarly-ass) body to research versus putting it in the ground and letting the worms divvy up my remains. There’s a weird side to this in thinking that my body once had a soul, personality, feelings and there it will be, getting chopped-up, sliced, diced, and pulled away from itself; all for the purpose of higher education. I mean, wow, what if you (accidentally, I’m sure) knew the person you were slicing-up? Wouldn’t that be weird? (I think they must have some rules about body distribution to help avoid this but I’ll let you know after I read the book.)

Obviously, stuff like this doesn’t gross me out and my interests are so piqued that I have to wonder if I could actually do CSI stuff. From what I hear, it’s really boring/laborious work and nothing like the TV show. I don’t doubt it and I think that the TV show wouldn’t be nearly as popular if it came with sensory surround sounds and smells. Between the smells and crunching, I’d be a gonner for sure!

One of my favorite blogs is Queen of Dysfunction. She going through a funeral service education program and some of her posts about this stuff are hilarious, poignant, and sometimes, down-right gross. Yeah. My kind of read! Check her out if you get the chance. She’ll make you laugh squeamishly.

So, disappointment is over and I’m off to read about dead people.

My life is so cool in that way.