The topic for today ... the hippomane. You may be asking yourself what this is, and with good reason. I will admit that I once did not know what the hippomane was. I reference that in past tense because one night long ago (I think I was 12 or 13, my sister Janelle 9 or 10) we were helping my dad (a veterinarian) clean up from a cesarean and we came across a very uniquely shaped object with what I can best describe as a firm but squishy texture about the size of a bar of soap.What came next was a very rare thing; my dad DIDN'T know what it was. I'll let you in on a secret...there isn't much that he doesn't know. But, that did not stop him from doing the father thing. He said without skipping a beat: "Why don't you do some research and write a report about what a hippomane is." You can only imagine how devastating that was for our young ears to hear; homework and we weren't even in school. We had one week. We drew the conclusion that hippmanes do not serve any purpose. None what so ever. They just get to hang out and exist, the only similarity I can make for them in the human body is the appendix. Every cesarean after that, we searched for the hippomane, sometimes we found it sometimes we didn't. The funny thing is, that they don't always exist.
I reflect back on that moment from my childhood and realize how much more I learned that just defining what a hippomane was. I learned how important being a life-long learner is. How questioning leads to discovery!
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