I added a horizontal line dividing what I have posted before on today’s posting.
The doctor had said I had three, maybe four months to live. It did and didn’t surprise me. I am getting old, and I did accept that I would die long ago. It’s family and friends I worry about. How to tell them? The radio. The song. It came out when I first started college. I remember…
“Can you see what we are supposed to be looking at?” Sandy asked, looking up from the microscope.
“I thought I had it where you could see it, but they zip around. It must’ve moved. I’ll try again,” Ken waited until Sandy moved aside and then peered into the microscope.
“It’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair?” Ken asked, not looking up from the microscope.
“That you’ve got such beautiful long luscious eyelashes.”
“What?” Ken looked up from the microscope, confused.
“Guys get all the good things like luscious eyelashes. I’d kill to have your eyelashes,” Sandy pronounced solemnly like a judge handing down a verdict.
At the next lab table, a girl said, “Ain’t that true? Guys get good things and don’t know it.”
Ken reached up and felt his eyelashes. Then he realized what he was supposed to be doing and turned back the microscope. He said, “I have two of them.” He stepped back for Sandy.
Sandy looked for the longest time. Ken began to wonder if the protozoa had moved again.
Sandy said, “Do you suppose they’re getting in on without looking up from the microscope? You know… The book calls it conjugating.”
“I don’t know. The text used the word Conjugation. Conjugating sounds like we left the biology lab for some language classroom.”
“I like that. What does one protozoan say to another? Can we try conjugating tonight?”
The girl at the next lab table laughed out loud, and Ken blushed.
Sandy started to hum quietly to herself. It sounded familiar.
Ken listened carefully and then asked, “Are you humming Rain Drops?”
Sandy didn’t look up from the microscope and said, “Yeah, sure.”
“How do you make the sound of thunder at the song’s start?” Ken asked with a mischievous look on his face.
Sally looked up and, seeing the look on Ken’s face said, “I fake it.”
Ken laughed and turned back to the workbook. He could see he had completed the assignment. Ken looked once more at Sally. She wasn’t drawing, which was part of the assignment, so he said, “The lab is almost over. You better get the protozoa’s drawing done as it is the main part of the assignment.”
“Shit,” Sandy said as she grabbed her workbook.
Ken sat watching Sandy absentmindedly as she drew her the assignment. He thought, “I wonder about tonight. Just another Friday night with nothing to do. I think I’ll buy a cheap bottle.”
Sandy interrupted Ken’s thoughts, “Aren’t you going to draw this thing too?”
Ken held up his workbook, “I’ve already done it.”
“I didn’t see you drawing.”
“I did it while you were using the microscope.”
“How can you do that? You weren’t looking at it,” Sandy said.
“I can’t unsee something once I’ve seen it.”
“What?”
“I got a weird ability. They call it an almost perfect photographic memory,” Ken said.
“Yeah, sure. It is weird. How does it work?”
Ken shrugged, “I don’t know. When I see something, I can remember it like I had a picture of it.”
“Then tests got to be easy pees for you?”
“No, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way for me. I can remember how a book exactly looks, but most times, I can’t remember the text.”
“That is weird. Can I test you?” Sandy asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“What was I wearing for our first lab together?”
Ken didn’t pause, “You were wearing a light yellow dress. We were sitting down, so I don’t own what kind of shoes you had. The only jewelry you had was a necklace with a gold chain with a gold heart on it.
They were interrupted by the lab instructor telling them the lab would be ending in 10 minutes.
“Geez, I can’t finish drawing it in that short time. Are you going to be around sometime around the lunch hour? I got a couple of hours off before my German class,” Sandy said.
“Yeah, sure, I have just three-morning classes on Fridays.”
“You’re sure lucky. I have two more today. My German class next and then an English Lit class at three o’clock.”
