When I was a kid I had many interests and aspirations. One of them for a short time was to become a doctor. I guess this came from playing “doctor” with little girls. My sister got a plastic nurse kit and I got a plastic “doctor kit” for Christmas one year. It had all kinds of neat stuff like a plastic stethoscope and a plastic hypodermic, etc. The hypodermic had red inside it and when you pushed down on the plunger, it covered it with white. I guess that was to simulate a “blood transfusion”. It’s a good thing I didn’t get the “doctor kit” for Christmas now since before I transfused any “blood”, I’d have to get it tested for Aids. My mother really encouraged me to pursue this interest probably for when I actually did become a doctor I could support her in her “golden years”. Also, she could get her entire medical needs taken care of for free. My mother encouraged me along this line by buying me a “Visible Man”. (See pic below). The “Visible Man” consisted of a clear statue of a man with interlocking “guts” inside of it. I had to paint each “gut”. I’m not sure I painted each one the right color, unless a pancreas is orange and a stomach is purple, or a prostate gland is green (Mine probably is by now). I also had to paint all the veins and arteries inside the man. I wasn’t about to try that. As a result my “Visible Man” didn’t have any blood flowing though any of his veins or arteries. Which was probably a good thing because if I cut him I didn’t want to get red or blue paint all over myself.  One of the difficult things was to glue all the bones together. That became a little easier after I remembered all the skeletons I saw each Halloween.

Along with the “Visible Man” my mother also bought me a life-sized skull that had a removable top and contained a life sized brain with 4 lobes and a medulla that fit in the bottom. Since Ben Casey was all the rage at that time on T.V. she probably hoped I’d become a brain surgeon and hopefully someday I could give myself a brain transplant. In fact, one of my Psychiatrists gave seriious consideration to the idea of transplanting a monkey’s brain into me and then transplanting my brain into the monkey. He gave up the idea when he realized that wouldn’t be fair to the monkey. The “brain” was made of some soft polyethylene material and smelled really good. I spent more time smelling the brain than studying it. A little while after that I again lost interest and “threw my brain away”. Hmmm, THAT would explain a lot of things today! A few years ago a very interesting thing happened. Tim came up to the house with a brown grocery bag and told me to put my hand in it and feel it without showing me what was in it. I felt the object inside the bag for only a few seconds and said, “A piece of brain”. Sure enough, it was one of the lobes of the brain that I had when I was a kid that was inside the life-sized skull with the removable top! That really blew Tim away and he was just amazed that I knew what it was some 40 plus years later! Of course the polyethylene “brain material” had hardened over the years, but I knew almost immediately what it was! After all I was going to be a brain surgeon, remember! He found it out in the field when he was disking. It seems like everything we owned as kids eventually ended up out in the field. I sure can’t figure out how this happened. Alas, another mystery in life???

I finally got all the “guts” in the “Visible Man” painted weird colors and assembled the skeleton. For a while I was interested in becoming a surgeon, which was probably an urge to see if I painted all the “guts” the right colors. Occasionally after that, I messed around with it until, much to my mother’s dismay; I soon totally lost interest in being a doctor. However, later on when I became a teenager and my hormones started to overflow, I wanted an “Invisible Woman”! I could have always told my mother that I was interested in becoming a doctor again and specialize in Gynecology! With all the problems I’m having lately, I not only wished I had become a doctor but that I’d specialized in Urology! It’s just as well I didn’t become a doctor anyway since I hate to play golf. With my luck, if I had become a doctor, I would have specialized in Psychiatry and spent all my time trying to analyze myself and gotten discouraged and gone into a different line of work altogether! I wonder what kind of jobs my 3 former Psychiatrists have now? After word of me spread throughout the psychiatric circles, it’s been really difficult for me to find another one. Every time I try to call a new one they either say that they’re not taking on any new patients, or else their phone number is now unlisted or the receptionist said the doctor has moved his practice and didn’t leave a forwarding address. They suggested I call Dial-A-Prayer, but they keep hanging up on me and after a while even THEY got an unlisted number! At a last resort, I called the Suicide Prevention Hot Line and after explaining my present state of mind to them, they said to go ahead and “do it”! They even had the audacity to suggest ways to accomplish it! My present Psychiatrist must be new in the field because he’s still seeing me and his phone number isn’t unlisted FOR NOW. However, during my last appointment he did ask me if there were any openings at the County Highway Dept. I’m sure he was just asking about it “for a friend”…