Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Now it can be told

Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up, come one, come all! Be the first to see the wonder of our age, the glory of our time, the first-ever miracle ACTUALLY CAPTURED on X-RAY FILLUM before your VERY EYES!*

Do you think that might have given just a moment's pause to the eager hed writer (or centerpiece designer)? That, since we're presenting the visual evidence on the same page as this:

Dr. Abdulnasser Alhajeri, a Bahrain-educated assistant professor of radiology who had just started at the University of Kentucky in August, was called in to consult about a spine angiogram, and he noticed an abnormality in Chloe's mid-thoracic region.

... perhaps we're actually dealing with a case of the dedicated, creative application of professional training, rather than some sort of random divine intervention that we can't see, much less measure?

... Could it be called a miracle?

He pauses, looking at the blonde toddler a few feet away, with her blue twirling skirt and tiny black boots and the miniature Reese's peanut butter cup she has lifted delicately from a nearby candy jar.

Maybe, he said.


Oh, come on. What did we really expect out of the setup line? Even if the poor guy hadn't moved here three months ago -- if he was named Adolph Rupp Hatfield and grew up in some part of Harlan where the sun goes down about three in the day -- he's still not going to say "Hope not, because we're well and truly SOL if we have to rely on miracles around here."

Consider this your final warning, lest ye be smitten by lightning, turned into a pillar of salt*** or otherwise kicked around the Olympian playing fields. No more miracles. Leave miracles to the Vatican investigators. Maybe, in turn, they'll leave the diagramming of relative clauses to us.


* Ladies and children not admitted.**
** And if that don't fetch 'em, I don't know Lexington Arkansaw.
*** You could always turn yourself into police! Thanks, I'll be here all week.

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2 Comments:

Blogger John Cowan said...

To be fair, the central nervous system is still pretty much of a mystery, and nobody knows exactly which insults it's going to recover from and which will remain unchanged when the apparent cause is removed. Just ask any sufferer from chronic pain.

9:37 AM, December 02, 2010  
Blogger The Ridger, FCD said...

That still doesn't make it a "miracle".

1:02 PM, December 02, 2010  

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