Innocence vs. Knowledge

As stated in an earlier post, I took my first College classes the summer of 1988 right after my High school graduation. I think I only had 1 week off from school. I had worked at Wendy’s during my High School career and decided that I wanted a more adult job when I started College…. so I applied at the K-mart in my town. It was the worse thing I ever did. I should have stayed at Wendy’s because I was happy there and everyone new me. I think I might post a whole separate post about my experience working at K-Mart but that will be another time. Need to stay on track with the cadaver story.

After only 5 months (I think) I quit K-Mart and was jobless. Luckily I was still living at home. It was from October 1988 tell February 1989 that I didn’t have a job. I saw a listing for an Anatomy Lab assistant and I applied. Got the job. It was the BEST Job I have ever had. It is more like a library setting. It was not your traditional Anatomy Lab where you see bodies laying on metal tables, but rather a trailer full of cubbies where students would come check out modules and take back to the cubbies and watch slides and listen to tapes about the different body systems. It was quite and peaceful and everyone was nice and considerate of each other. I enjoyed learning the student’s names and making it a contest to anticipate what module they would need and having it ready when they came up to the counter. It was a game to me. I got to Procter tests, and help the instructor test out his new computer programs, and got to watch the very first DVD…. well it wasn’t a DVD like we know today…it was the size of a record, but looked like a DVD. I remember thinking that they were more work than a help…. boy was I wrong. I love DVD’s and CD’s now. LOL!

My other main job was to dust the plastic anatomy displays that were around the trailer. There were three I remember clear as day that I dusted each week. All three of them were on shelves right above this metal gurney that had a blue tarp over it and two white plastic buckets on the tray below and also had tubes going into each tub. Sometimes it smelled of formaldehyde but not very often. There was a small classroom that held a traditional Anatomy class and maybe one week out of each semester the gurney would go into this room and the classroom door would be shut. It was the end of one semester (I had been working at the anatomy lab for about a year and ½ a this point) when one of the students who attended the traditional Anatomy class came up to the counter and asked me if there was a water fountain in the building. I told her about the one down the hall, and pointed to it. She quickly replied, “I am not drinking water next to that dead guy!” I laughed, and corrected her and told her that it was not real. “Yes it is!” She spat back. And I just stared at her and then it hit me. She was telling the truth! She had seen what was really under that blue tarp. I got sick to my stomach. Soon after that I spoke with my boss and asked her if it was a real body and she said yes, and was surprised that I didn’t know this already. I guess I just assumed that a dead body could not be out side a freezer. But the buckets and tubes under the gurney had formaldehyde in them and that was how the body could be preserved with out being in a freezer. And I guess every 3 or 4 years the instructor would trade in the body for a new one.

So after that knowledge things were just not the same. The end of that last semester I graduated and started working in a Dental Office as a Dental Assistant, but needless to say I never stopped thinking about the dead body that I walked passed every single day for a year and ½ while working at the Anatomy Lab and leaned up against the gurney at least once a week to dust the plastic life size anatomy displays…the best job I ever had!