This is a
true story.
In my last year in
junior high, I was required to take my first serious
science class, which was at times
difficult, because I wasn't
scientifically-minded, and at times
easy, because I had a
talent for
rote memorization. One of our projects for the year was going to be
dissection, which I already knew I wasn't going to enjoy. I could memorize all the parts of a
frog's
anatomy, but I already suspected that wasn't going to help me actually
locate a frog's
kidneys or whatever when it came time to digging in its
guts...
So the time came around the middle of the year, and the
science teacher got her delivery of
pickled frogs. That was, no doubt, the only way you can get
junior high kids to cut up a frog -- it's hard enough convincing them to
slice one open, but if they had to
kill them, too, you'd lose most of the girls and a good percentage of the boys. We came in one morning, and there was a dead preserved frog sitting in a pan in the middle of each desk.
My
lab partner was a hateful bitch, but in junior high, all but about a dozen of the girls are hateful bitches. It's
hormones, ya know. We'd been assigned to each other, and neither of us were happy about it. She'd
gripe about me loudly, and I'd
grind my teeth loudly. Of course, it did us no good. We'd already decided that I would be doing the
cutting, and she'd look over my shoulder and make
gagging noises.
Teamwork -- ain't it grand.
We were close to finishing the project. The frog had been safely pinned to the pan, its
stomach sliced open,
ribs separated, insides prodded, and various organs removed and crudely
sketched. I was
scooping out as many
eggs as I could to get a better view of the
scenery when she digs her nails into my arm and whispers, "It
moved."
I think all I said was "Leggo my damn
arm." It couldn't
move. It had been
dead for who-knows-how-long. It had been preserved in
formaldehyde. Its limbs were pinned to the tray. Its
guts had been mostly removed. This was, as they say, an EX-frog. But she digs her nails in harder and whispers, "Look at the leg!"
And damn if the
leg wasn't moving.
It wasn't moving much with that
pin through it, but it was
jerking a bit like it wanted to kick free. I
goggled at it for a second, while completely forgetting about her nails in my arm. It couldn't possibly be a delayed
nerve twitch, I thought. It had been
dead for too long. But it was still jerking, and I finally regained the ability to function. This was still a
science project, so I got down and looked at it more closely.
The
eyes were
open,
glazed, and
cloudy. But they were also
moving. And the
mouth was
opening and closing slowly, almost like it was trying to
breathe. Or
speak.
By now, my lab partner had run from the room sobbing. The science teacher looked
puzzled and asked me what was the matter.
None of the other dissected frogs in the room had started moving. I looked down, and the frog's leg wasn't twitching anymore. The mouth was now very firmly shut.
"Nothing's wrong," I said. And I didn't mention it again.