TIMES TWO

Blog number 154                                               March 06, 2008

Still on this brain surgeon's book, she's talking about a tool that drills through the skull but stops when it hits the soft surface of the brain.  She says, because of the tool's construction, that if you stop before you get all the way through the skull, it's impossible to get the thing to cutting again. 

She then goes on to say, " with this glitch in mind, whoever is teaching the intern to use the perforator is tempted to yell, 'Don't stop!' above the loud drone of the drill.  I have seen, on more than one occasion, the driller stop drilling in order to clarify what is being yelled to him."

This reminded me of a story in a book about the Vietnam war where some troops were spending the night in a hut by a river and the guy telling the story was assigned the night goggles to watch for infiltrators on a dark night. 

He thought he saw a face pop up over the bank of the stream and he instinctively took the goggles from his eyes in order to see better, although he had been warned to never do this.  When he replaced the goggles, the face was gone, and although he watched carefully the rest of the night, he never saw anything again.  He worried all night long about warning the rest of the troops, balancing this against a false alarm.  Did he see a face or not?  He never knew for sure.