You all know I am a nurse. I have always loved to study anatomy; the design of the human body and how it works. I have often wondered why can’t we make the study of our bodies more interesting? Why don’t most of us want to know how our body cells make new cells every day? Or how our blood flows down and away from our hearts through our arteries and then our veins push blood back up our legs and back to our hearts? Or to understand where every organ is located in our body?

A few months ago I had a flat tire. This I think can be a top three stressor for most people. I was lucky because my car, Silly Tilly, was parked in one of the Foxy Hags driveway, Chickie’s. And an even greater blessing was that our friend Bippy was working in the big out-building next door. (Bippy is who welded my yard art together, the hay rake wheel, and this is the building he works in when he is not working his day job.) It was around 10 o’clock in the evening and when I saw my flat tire my spirits became as deflated as the tire! How was I to get this tire that was as flat as a pancake back into working order this late at night? Then Chickie noticed the lights on in Bippy’s building and we called him. He walked over, checked out the tire, and told me to slowly drive Silly Tilly over to the out-building. He could fix the flat. Hallelujah!

I was totally surprised at the equipment inside this long, rectangular building. Bippy actually had a hydraulic lift for cars. He assisted me in parking my car in place, and then instructed me to get out of Silly Tilly and stand to the side. Then he slowly lifted my car up into the air with the lift. It was amazing! We walked all around, viewing the underside of my car. Forget the tire! I had never seen the belly of a car. He showed me the metal structures, the axles, and the brakes, where the gas tank was, and of course we looked at the tires. He found a nail in the flat tire and easily fixed it with a plug. (Easy for him, me not so much, but Bippy knows cars, has built one from the ground up.) After this experience I now believe car dealers should all have hydraulic lifts to raise up a car so all potential buyers can view the underside. That way a person could understand even more what he or she is purchasing with their money. Besides, it was all so interesting.

So then I got to thinking about our bodies, these incredible vehicles that carry our life force inside of us everywhere we go. I can take it all for granted, all the things this body of mine can do. I can be ho-hum about it all. And I know I still have so much I can learn about what actually goes on inside my body. What if we could try to make it more interesting for all of us? Start in kindergarten and utilize the wonder “the littles” as my neighbor Maritza says, utilize the wonder small children have for most everything, and begin to teach about the body, inside and out. Think how much more knowledgeable we would all be, and oh! so much healthier because of our knowledge.

Then I began to wonder if anyone has ever built an amusement park based on the anatomy of the human body, and throw in the anatomy of a cat, or a dog, or a horse. How fascinating. Say you could meander through the structure of a brain and really see how it downloads information, or sitting with the heart, putting some headphones on and really feel how a heart beats, or slowly paddle a kayak, like floating down a lazy river, and feel how the blood circulates all through our bodies. Imagine if you could see the inside of a colon in the abdomen, with all its twists and turns, riding through it on a four wheeler and really understand how certain foods and fluids effect the tissues. Think how much more thoughtful we would be in our choices for food and drinks. Or perhaps stand in a specially designed balcony that moves like a crane on a truck, up and down, up and down, and watch the muscles in the leg contract, because that’s what muscles do to aid us as mobile human beings.

I would be very interested in purchasing a ticket to quietly stroll all over the tongue and see how it really operates. To understand how it moves as a muscle, tastes food, holds saliva in our mouths. I myself deal with different tastes of my saliva everyday because of my history of radiation on my tongue. I can tell you our bodies respond at a cellular level to happiness, or stress, or overheating from mowing the lawn. Our bodies are that sophisticated, that fine tuned.

Well, I’m sure you get the picture. Perhaps you can visualize other body parts in this amusement park. Jump around on an eyeball or dive into an ear to check out all the parts. The fact is, our bodies are incredible, every healthy cell is full of LIFE! Isn’t that wonderful? Makes you want to go out and buy a great, informative anatomy book, complete with pictures! :O)

c   Love, Joan