Open House!
                or
"Mother, please don't touch"

Part of my aim to act as normal as possible - and to stifle my extreme enthusiasm - was to not take my camera to Fran's Open House night at the nursing school.  (What?  Thirty year-old women don't want their mothers behaving the same way they did on the first day of pre-school?  Oh, well.)   Oh, the missed opportunities.  It was so...cool.  The simulation mannequins. The plastic body parts.  The practice stuff.  I was ready to sign up.  Though my enthusiasm waned when the head of the school was talking about the creeping average age of the Amerian nursing faculty.  That creeping age was a year less than my own age.  Maybe it's not the time for me to make a late career change.

Martha and Edward came along with us.  I sat on my hand when the floor was opened to questions, as much as I pointedly wanted to ask, "What advice would you give to young men thinking of careers in nursing."  And Martha was deftly positioned between mother and son to keep me from elbowing him repeatedly.   Only trying to help.

So, I tried to restrain myself, take it all in. Avoid the temptations of prop comedy - which wasn't easy, especially when shown the hydraulically operated childbirth mannequin. Some things just can't be replicated with plastics and computers.

Except for that one moment when I couldn't help but bring in a tiny bit of my own expertise.  Gathered around a mannequin programmed for diminishing heart beats and agonal breathing, someone asked what might be done next for the 'patient.'  I said, "Call a priest."   The instructor gave me high marks for that.  (Well, actually, I hope the nurses learn not to wait that long.  As one who has answered many phone calls from the hospital, sooner is better than later.  And, no, we don't send someone to "read the patient his rites.")

Incredibly realistic.  Incredible.