Reading for May 2, 2010
For the artist, scientist, nurse, teacher, artisan, child, parent, and philosopher in us , there are just times when musing: infinities, dreams, levels of consciousness, callings and the essence of our very souls - just has to get in line and wait – like everybody else's entrancement – while overriding priorities arise...................like survival.
For the artist, scientist, nurse, teacher, artisan, child, parent, and philosopher in us , there are just times when musing: infinities, dreams, levels of consciousness, callings and the essence of our very souls - just has to get in line and wait – like everybody else's entrancement – while overriding priorities arise...................like survival.
Eyeball to Eyeball.
We were locked into each other........................ It was freak at first sight.
As a child and through high school and university, every single picture of a cobra showed its head shaped like a cupped hand. Adding to that, the Dell Golden Guide Book about Poisonous Whatstheirspecies, that I had just studied, showed cobras with a cupped-hand shaped head, most probably.
No prior experience (or knowledge) required..........................in an instant: hundreds of students disappeared, inter-species communication reached a new high................and I dropped the snake back into
the drum, wedged the cover back in place, and was on my way, bounding to find the students - any student, to continue my lecture on snakes. I wanted to tell them what I had picked up on......that, I had simply confused a harmless, non-poisonous snake with one of the world's most deadly.
But................it was too late.
My students had run through the campus and into town telling everyone that Mr. Hank looked a Black Cobra in the eye.
The tale took, and remained. One day, several years after I had completed my service, I received a fabulous jolt of nostalgia with a letter traced from Ghana to Canada, to England, to The United States, to a friend of a friend of a friend. During a cab ride in Accra, Ghana's capital city, the driver discovered that the passenger was an American. Immediately, the taxi-driver whipped out one of the many copies of the passport pictures we Peace Corps teachers had given our students. It was my photo, and along with it was the excited query......you know Snakeman?
Hal Vick, one of the people I worked with in Portland Oregon ~ almost a decade later ~ was urged by another colleague to ask me about the Cobra story. His query was amusing. In the old Wilcox Women's Hospital - breaking a few minutes from his studying for Board Certification as an OB/GYN - I heard: "Henry, how do you look a Black Cobra in the eye, accidentally?"
to be continued...............
Join Captain Flip Side every Sunday in his true life Adventures
Happy Daze,
the Captain
the drum, wedged the cover back in place, and was on my way, bounding to find the students - any student, to continue my lecture on snakes. I wanted to tell them what I had picked up on......that, I had simply confused a harmless, non-poisonous snake with one of the world's most deadly.
But................it was too late.
My students had run through the campus and into town telling everyone that Mr. Hank looked a Black Cobra in the eye.
The tale took, and remained. One day, several years after I had completed my service, I received a fabulous jolt of nostalgia with a letter traced from Ghana to Canada, to England, to The United States, to a friend of a friend of a friend. During a cab ride in Accra, Ghana's capital city, the driver discovered that the passenger was an American. Immediately, the taxi-driver whipped out one of the many copies of the passport pictures we Peace Corps teachers had given our students. It was my photo, and along with it was the excited query......you know Snakeman?
Hal Vick, one of the people I worked with in Portland Oregon ~ almost a decade later ~ was urged by another colleague to ask me about the Cobra story. His query was amusing. In the old Wilcox Women's Hospital - breaking a few minutes from his studying for Board Certification as an OB/GYN - I heard: "Henry, how do you look a Black Cobra in the eye, accidentally?"
to be continued...............
Join Captain Flip Side every Sunday in his true life Adventures
Happy Daze,
the Captain
