Transporting Skulls

Context is everything.  While I’ve done some strange things in medical school, I usually do them in the land of the utterly bizarre: the gross anatomy lab.  No matter how taken aback you might be for an instant, in that room you have only to look around as you dig through the layers of the human body to remember that everyone there understands. 

Not so with transporting skulls.  I recently had the opportunity to take a human skull home from school to study for our anatomy exam.  Have you ever had the chance to look - I mean really look - at a human skull?  They’re infinitely more complex than I had hitherto imagined.  I recall a lot of talk in undergraduate anthropology classes about the foramen magnum (Latin for big hole) and its position leaving us telltale clues about the development of bipedalism.  Little did I know that this is “the big hole” because there are approximately a zillion small ones.  Yes, a zillion.  Most of them have specific names, too, so in an effort to help us learn all the ins and outs of these sneaky passageways each pair of students was assigned our very own skull. 

So it is that I found myself one day last week boarding a city bus line with a very peculiar box.  The box is gray plastic with egg-carton foam lining the inside to protect the bones.  It’s kept closed tightly with a giant rubber band – like the kind for newspapers or broccoli, but bigger.  On either side it sports a white label marked: “Human.”  This is, I assume, so that the skulls of all types can be kept in an orderly fashion when not being used.  The box does not fit in my tote bag, where I was planning to keep it hidden from the other passengers.  It goes in, but the top doesn’t close.  This leaves the label, “Human,” clear for all to read.  I would prefer that wasn’t the case.  Even though I’m doing nothing wrong I have a guilty sensation.  I expect to be pulled into questioning by the transit police for transporting human remains.  I try to think of how I will prove I’m a medical student when this happens.  My student ID doesn’t specify my program and it’s not like I carry proof of registration with me.  I have an anatomy syllabus and a copy of Grant’s Dissector - a manual on how to dissect a human cadaver - in my bag.  Maybe those will be enough?   I tuck my scarf over the box, hiding the box from view. 

As I stagger to the back of the bus, I set the bag down reverently, gently.  I recall thinking that anyone observing must think there was a computer inside – because really what else would the modern commuter be carrying that’s so fragile and valuable?  I, of course, know the truth.  I’m carrying so much more than a computer.  I keep my hand on top of the bag trying to protect it from falling sideways as the bus turns and stops.  I still envision someone watching me.  Deciding to search my bag that so clearly contains something of value, something possibly dangerous.  In the end of course, nothing happens.  Just as no one ever cares what I have in my bag, no one cares today.  No one pulls aside my scarf to find the “Human” label on the side.

In the end this is just one of the moments of medical education when you stop and think: how strange were the things I did today?  Not only did I have the opportunity to cradle in my hands the place that once held this person’s brain - the seat of all that they were - but I put it in a gray plastic box and hid it in a tote bag to ride the bus.