Humans Are Weird: Part of Her Brain Was Destroyed?!
There is a thread that shows up on Facebook now and again, apparently from Tumblr or Imgur, an absolutely hilarious thread on how aliens would react to what humans can do and the odd things we take for granted. Something about how tough we are, and how we can survive most wounds “take a licking and keep on ticking.” Something about how our ancestors could beat any predator by just outwaiting it and walking after fiercer, tougher critters and just wearing them into exhaustion. The trope/thread recommended all alien spaceships have at least one human crewmember, just because we’re so gosh-darned awesome.
It got me wondering, as a stroke survivor, how such aliens would react to the notion of surviving a stroke and taking it for granted.
### ### ###
“First Officer?”
“Yes, Captain?” Chlorophyll replied.
“Our human received a message from Earth. It’s flagged by the Human Relations Board. I need you to view it before we pass it on to Crewman Jones.”
“Why?”
“Regulations state humans must not be left unsupervised.”
“Humans are prone to endangering themselves and others,” Chlorophyll agreed. “Isn’t screening his messages a violation of privacy?”
“Yes,” the captain confirmed, “but if the information in the message distresses Jones, we must be prepared to deal with that.”
“If the information delights him, that can be even more dangerous. Humans are odd,” the first officer recited the common wisdom.
### ### ###
“Crewman Jones?”
“Yes, First Officer,” The human male saluted smartly.
“I understand your progenitor has suffered a brain injury,” Chlorophyll said as sympathetically as he could.
It took a minute for Jones to decipher the first officer’s meaning. “Yeah, my Mom had a minor stroke. “
“Will you need to request leave to return to Earth?”
“Uh, no.” The idea seemed to take Jones by surprise. “ It’s a minor stroke. She’s getting good care. She doesn’t need me to go back and hold her hand.”
“Has her termination date been scheduled yet? It may be possible for you to return to your planet for the funeral rites.”
Jones shook his head. “Dad says she’s making good progress and expected to make a nearly full recovery.”
“A nearly full recovery?” Chlorophyll repeated in disbelief. “Part of her brain was destroyed.”
“Only a very small part.” He bit back the joke he would have made to another human. ‘It’s not like she was using it.’ “Just a blood clot.”
“A blood clot in her brain. How is it possible ‘she’s making great progress’?”
“Dad said it was a minor stroke.”
### ### ###
Humans are weird, and proudly so. Humans are tough. For what it’s worth, being a stroke survivor isn’t fun, but it beats the heck out of the alternative. The day I managed to go to the bathroom by myself rivals my wedding day and the birth of my offspring as the best day in my life. It’s just a few days shy of 11 months since my stroke. I can walk with a cane. My left arm is more decorative than useful (I typed this one-handed). I can’t drive yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever drive again. I can read a novel again (that took months, to regain sufficient concentration to read a novel or follow the plot of a movie.)I probably won’t make it to 99, like my great-great-grandmother, who was the oldest person in the county when she died, but I should be good for another decade or two.
