A former student peeked into my empty room last week. I was expecting a current student, worried she’d forgot to make-up her final exam. She wouldn\u2019t pass without it. It was a Thursday, the first of two planning days in 2019 following winter break. You might wonder how a student could forget such a thing. She took it Friday, a day later, and passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s always a little jarring when a former student returns, a mental struggle to place them in time and space, awkward when their name is lost too. Superior name recall was once a source of pride, but the waves of students over the years have cured me of that. Minutes after she’d left, it came to me – Roopsha. Only been two years after all, a unique name (the double o, an assonance rhyme with poodle) and she\u2019d returned once before. I should\u2019ve remembered. Would humanity be better off if we remembered everything? If you could switch on the gene for photographic memory, would you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, you\u2019d have to believe there is a gene, or gene combination, for photographic memory. There isn\u2019t. How do I know? Because there is no such thing as photographic memory. An article in Scientific American<\/a>, \u201cEven a winner of the memory Olympics still had to keep sticky notes on the refrigerator to remember what she had to do during the day.\u201d I once had a parent call me on the last day of school to demand I add points to her child\u2019s final grade, points her child deserved that I\u2019d supposedly promised and failed to deliver, this mother telling me she believed her daughter over me because her daughter \u2018kept a thorough system of sticky notes at her bedroom desk to keep track of such things\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some take pride in never forgetting a face, but most of us remember faces better, we remember visual material better than non-visual. Seems we all have a kind<\/em> of photographic memory. It\u2019s the few who combine intense study over years with better-than-average innate ability who seem to possess a remarkable skill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I remember Roopsha had impeccable study habits: intense attention, note-taking, kept an agenda, planned ahead. She stood out for the type of question, less about physics, more about logistics, like the classic, \u2018how many questions on the test?\u2019 Or, \u2018can we round 9.8 to 10 for gravity?\u2019 Or \u2018is pen ok?\u2019 Explaining the hard stuff, how to think about the physical world, can wear a teacher out, but the easy stuff, the sheer volume, is tiresome too. Politeness and sincerity matter. Roopsha oozed both and I came to enjoy her earnest questions, unnecessary as I felt them to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today she\u2019s a sophomore at MIT majoring in biomedical engineering. Roopsha\u2019s high school science fair project won acclaim at the County level and maybe the State too, I don\u2019t remember. She\u2019d been an intern at the time and assisted a researcher at Georgia Tech. Or Emory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now she\u2019s researching the human genome, cataloguing proteins, a challenge shrinking her library of proteins. She mentioned protein folding and synthesis, cellular somethings-or-other, microbial mish-machinations and I nodded along like it was all very interesting and made perfect sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On MIT\u2019s website, there are many young women in the images<\/a> wearing lab coats and latex gloves. No Roopsha though. On MIT News, an article<\/a> discussed a gene form that\u2019s been linked to Alzheimer\u2019s. \u201cThe researchers also found that they could eliminate the signs of Alzheimer\u2019s in brain cells by editing the gene with CRISPR.\u201d Roopsha had referenced CRISPR technology and I said, \u201cThat reminds me of a short story I\u2019d read over the holidays.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a story set in a future world where CRISPR gene-editing technology is mass-marketed to humans for the purpose of selecting traits for their lawn, pets, and children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roopsha said, \u201cYou know there are reports the Chinese have used this technology to clone a human baby. I don\u2019t know if I believe the story or not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHealthy skepticism is the hallmark of a good scientist. T.C. Boyle mentioned the Chinese pioneering the CRISPR technology in his story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pulling out her phone, she asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s the title?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAre We Not Men?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Roopsha said, \u201cYou should check out the movie, \u2018Gattaca\u2019. And a novel called ‘Beggars in Spain<\/a>.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2011, NASA published a list of its most scientifically plausible science-fiction movies. Gattaca (1997), starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman made #1. The theme is eugenics, a society where children are born with predetermined genetic traits. The fictional society in the novel, ‘Beggars in Spain\u2019 is split between the non-genetically modified (The Norms) and the modified to not need sleep, the sleepless gaining unfair advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I jotted her recommendations thinking I\u2019d need to forfeit sleep to get to these. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n CRISPR technology is touted as \u2018democratized gene editing\u2019 because the technology makes it super easy to snip DNA segments. In effect, any old plumbing researcher with a pair of microscopic scissors and tweezers can mess with life\u2019s fundamental building blocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You don\u2019t need a lab coat, a petri dish, and university funding to mess with life\u2019s fundamental blocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Christmas Day at my sister’s I met McBaker. Or Mick. Or Baker. Or Machine Gun. Depending on who you ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My sister Rose\u2019s husband picked the puppy up Christmas Eve at what he\u2019d hoped wasn\u2019t a puppy mill in a northeastern Ohio town I\u2019d never heard of – Dundee – a town whose existence I briefly doubted; Dundee exists alright, it\u2019s there in Wikipedia, 71 miles south of Cleveland in Tuscarawas County. Tuscarawas is a Native American word meaning \u2018open mouth\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The puppy gnawed on my nephew\u2019s socked foot with a weak jaw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poodles are apparently crossed with any breed. The naming convention is biased toward oodles, doodles, and poos: Malamoodle, Giant Schnoodle, Dalmadoodle, Eskapoo, Jackapoo, Poovanese, and Pootalian. The list goes on: Poodle, Woodle, Foodle, and Saint Berdoodle. From a list of 112 Poodle mixes on dogbreedinfo.com<\/a>, I counted three that excluded -oodle or -poo from the name, for good reason: Rattle, Rottle, and Daisy Dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poodles crossed with Pit Bulls are Pit Boodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hairless red pit bull, a taut muscular hide the color of a ripe maraschino, has a great name: Cherry Pit. Cherry pits do not exist. They\u2019re the pigment of fiction writer T.C. Boyle\u2019s imagination, bred to be germ-free in his short story, \u201cAre We Not Men?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inside her home, my sister followed her Mini-Goldendoodle bent over with a spray bottle of pee-be-gone in one hand, damp sponge in the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The puppy needed a name. Baker Mayfield-mania has overtaken northeastern Ohio as well as my sister\u2019s household of three teenage boys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their last two dogs were named O\u2019Malley and Finnegan. The puppy\u2019s working name was McBaker. Shortened to Mick, or Baker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n