Alternative Anatomy

 On Star Trek, the Original Series, the one that looked fake even way back then but persevered because it had such a conscience, Bones was often heard complaining to Spock about his physiology. Not only was Spock's heart never in the right place, neither were the rest of his vital organs. Which sort of makes sense, seeing as how foreign he appeared, what with those pointy ears and eye shadow. Later, when the new crop of Trekking began, the creators went to great pains to show how radically different species could be. This was shown primarily via the wrinkles on their foreheads. In the meantime, no special accommodations had to be made for crew members who used their prehensile tongues to steer or had only three fingers or for heaven's sake didn't show up on the bridge speaking Federation English. No, this was a journey where no man had gone before, at least as far as your standard bipedal humanoid forms were concerned. Which explains why the ship's doctor was routinely confounded by special guest aliens whose skins were blue or green, or who forgot to bring their medical chart with them explaining that even though they were air-breathing and walking erect, they evolved from plants. 

I bring this up because I sometimes feel like Doctor McCoy when I am dealing with little kids. The ones who can run around the playground for forty-five minutes without a break but collapse in a heap when they are asked to participate in the fifth grade PE test. They are also the same species that can go for hours without wiping their nose, seemingly oblivious to the ever-widening swath of snot collecting on their upper lip, only occasionally disrupted by a tongue or a sleeve drawn across it. But if one of them insists that they have a stomach ache, look out.

I introduce this malady with a reckoning: there is a difference between a tummy ache and a stomach ache in most children. Tummies are much more easily disrupted and can rarely be easily cured with a known pharmaceutical. Instead, these tend to appear in clusters around lunchtime before some major event. The best known treatment for the tummy ache is a trip to the office, usually accompanied by a call home to let parents know that the child is stuck at school in quasi-discomfort and needing some attention/validation. The tummy ache should not be confused with the stomach ache, which may carry many of the same symptoms, but can often be more obvious and convincing because of the vomiting. It's always a good idea when someone says they have a stomach ache in an elementary school to have a trash can available. If the patient insists they don't need a trash can, it might be just a tummy ache. Or it could be that they are seven years old and they don't have a real sense of just how abruptly that second bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos can be expelled. 

After a year of being confused and terrified of a plague that kept us all apart, I confess that I am looking forward to another voyage with a crew of these small creatures. I'm hoping that the time we spent away may have sharpened their own diagnostic skills, or at least given them a new vague malady to keep them out of their afternoon math test. "I'm sorry Mister Caven, but I'm feeling a little pandemic."