They Froze Some Mice and Called It Science

The past doesn't sit still just because you put it on ice

I read it in the paper this morning. Scientists got some mice into a hibernation that isn't hibernation, fiddled with the neurons, and when they thawed those poor creatures back out, the memories came rolling through clean as creek water. They're calling it a breakthrough. I'm calling it a Tuesday.

Don't ask me why we've got a porch step in Harrow Corners that isn't there on Sundays. It's just one of those things. Never argues when it's gone, never explains when it comes back, so we step over the space and get on with our morning. You learn to account for what's missing. That's not science. That's sense.

These researchers are eating up a lot of column inches for what amounts to this: freeze a thing, unfreeze a thing, and the thing still remembers what it was. Well. I could've told them that for the price of a phone call and a cup of decent coffee. When the lake gave the Hendersons' boy back, he didn't have a wrinkle on him, and his memory was sharp as the day he went under. Nobody ran a study. We just put a plate in front of him and let the boy eat.

What they're calling a QIH state, or some such alphabet soup, is just a way of saying they found a dial they didn't know was there and now they can't stop turning it. I understand the temptation. New dial, strange room, everybody reaches. But here's what they're not accounting for: a memory isn't a jar of preserves. You don't seal it up, shelve it through winter, and crack the lid come spring and find everything exactly as you left it. The past is a ghost that sits with you. It shifts its weight. It has opinions about where it wants to be kept.

I'm not against advancement. I've got a phone with more tricks than a carnival barker, and the camera on it sees better than I do in dim light. But there's a difference between a tool that helps you and a tool that convinces you there's nothing left you shouldn't touch. These folks activated neurons the way you'd flip a breaker, and they're proud of the lights that came on. I'd be more impressed if they could tell me what's living in the walls.

If you need a machine to settle your brain down, you're carrying the wrong kind of worry. I've known people in this county who've seen things that would turn your hair white before breakfast, and they kept their heads on straight not because someone mapped their neurons, but because they understood which things you engage with and which things you nod at politely and walk past. You poke at the dark places in a mind, you'd best be prepared for what pokes back.

My advice to these researchers is the same I'd give any cocky young hand who thinks he knows the shape of a thing before he's lived next to it: don't go sticking your hand in a beehive just to see what buzzes. Some things are better studied from the porch. You get more information that way, and you keep your fingers.

That fair we had, the one that ran nine days longer than it was scheduled and nobody could leave, just kept on with the rides and the music and the funnel cake until it was done with us, nobody sat down afterward to write a paper about it. We went home. We put our shoes by the door. We slept. The memory settled where it wanted to settle, and we had the good sense to let it.

That's what these scientists are missing. Not the neurons, not the methodology. The patience to let a thing be what it is without deciding you need to be the one holding the controls.

You can't bottle a memory. You can't shelf it and retrieve it on your schedule. Some things, once they're yours, keep their own hours. Respect that, and most of the time, it'll return the courtesy.

The mice are fine, I'm sure. But somebody ought to check on the researchers.

Keep your hands busy and your porch salted. , Aunt Dot
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