Either the people who use the lab are extremely unobservant, or both instructors have a sense of humor. I guess I’m going to find out now.
I have a very short attention span and an immature sense of humor, so I tend to walk around the room playing with the anatomy models. Skeletons picking their noses or giving the finger, that sort of thing. Or the hands wearing rubber gloves. I’m just not good at sitting still and keeping my hands to myself.
There’s this skeleton, near where my class of three was working with crickets, that has part of one lower arm missing. I’ve always felt sorry for it. I so wanted to put its arm in a sling. I’d find myself propping the half-arm against the chest in a sling-wearing position, except that it would fall down again as soon as I stopped holding it. Sigh.
So maybe a month ago, we’d been using cheesecloth, the professor was out of the room, and I had an idea. I turned to the girl next to me and said, “I want to do something very immature. I want to get the cheesecloth and make a sling for the poor skeleton. Please talk me out of it.”
She told me to go for it instead. So I got out the cheesecloth, and she helped me wrap a sling around the arm and neck. We giggled about it, and imagined the expressions on the faces of whatever class noticed our patient.
Next class, we get there, and the sling hasn’t been removed. It’s still there. So either the teacher didn’t mind people playing dress-up with his skeletons, or he had overlooked it because he knew it was broken. I figured the latter was more likely. Although classmate #3, who had been out sick the previous time, didn’t notice it until we pointed it out to her (again, while the prof was out of the room). And when the professor came back in, he didn’t notice dispite the fact that she was looking at it and very visibly holding back laughter. But then again, our class is on inverterbrates.
Every time we came to class, I expected to see the sling removed, and every time it was still there, it was driving me crazy wondering if our prank had been seen or not. So today I kind lost it. I rolled up a cardboard cigar and put it between the teeth. More obvious than the sling, no? And just to make sure, I took the tinfoil we’d been covering the cricket cage with, and turned it into a nice hat, with a brim. Stylish paranoia.
So if after break I visit the lab and Skelly still looks like this, it’s because they thought it was funny. If he’s bare, either they finally noticed, or just decided it’s gone too far. Or maybe I’m just crazy. Either way, I’ll know SOMEBODY has surely seen it. I’m sure.
If you’re going to be an attention whore, might as well be an an entertaining one.