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March 24, 2004

Ben and the Gom Jabbar


Ben got some shots this morning.

The nurse they sent in to administer the shots was the most leathery, ancient nurse I've ever seen. I found myself thinking, at the height of the squalling, that Frank Herbert must have been around for one of his childrens' immunizations, because the whole thing could have been out of the first chapter of Dune.

"What's in the needle, Nurse Smith?"

"Pain, young Hall. Pain."

The main difference being that when one imagines a scary old Bene Gesserit crone, one perhaps imagines less hot pink lipstick and a distinct lack of smokers' rasp. Obviously the go-to nurse for this sort of thing. Efficient and pitiless, clearly convinced that the merely old nurse she pushed past to administer the shots will never get anything done when she's gone. I've never thought of any health care professional as a common street criminal, but Al watched the needles go in and it sounds fair to describe the process as a ganking.

Some quick Ben stats from the visit today:

The doc's pretty happy with everything and says he's clearly eating as much as he needs, so we don't need to worry about his ongoing habit of sleeping from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. or so.

Alison picked up a copy of What's Going on in There?, which appears to address some of my recent questions about memory and infants. I was interested to note, on a quick skim, that an idea I had about memory structures was close enough that I should have jotted it down so I could feel clever for thinking it up before I was told by a book. Anyhow, more about that later. I need to give the chapter a deeper reading.

Posted by mph at March 24, 2004 12:28 PM

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