But experts in the brain injury field said the delayed response and confusion were primarily caused by a problem both the military and civilian world have struggled with for more than a decade: There is no reliable way to determine who has a brain injury and who does not.
Dave Philipps & Thomas Gibbons-Neff. NYT.
Does anybody really know anything?
I mean, they can't tell if your brain is damaged or not
until you keel over in a coma.
There could be nematodes in my brain right now, and I
wouldn't have a clue right up to the moment they erupted from my ear drums like steel wool.
That's why I carry shiny pebbles with me.
Always.
Not just any ordinary shiny pebbles, but the kind
you pick up off the beach. Which are really sea glass.
Pieces of broken glass bottles that have rolled around
the ocean floor for centuries until they become smooth
shiny pebbles, which are then cast up on the seashore.
Like ambergris.
These shiny pebbles have had long years to absorb the
mysteries of the ocean -- its healing powers and
deep wisdom.
So some of that inevitably must rub off on me if I carry
around enough of them.
It stands to reason.
But I don't stop there. Not by any means.
I mail bits of sea glass to politicians, philosophers, and celebrities, asking them to rub the sea glass in the palm of their hands for a few seconds and then mail them back to me.
I figure it can't hurt,
and maybe it'll do me some good.
But one time I sent a particularly translucent piece of green sea glass to Cas Mudde, a big shot professor in Holland.
And he never sent it back.
I waited and I waited and I waited.
One whole year I waited. Then I wrote him asking for my
shinny pebble back.
There was no reply.
So I flew to Holland, at my own expense, to look him up
and ask for my sea glass back.
I found him eating raw herring on a shale beach, with a storm coming in.
The turbulent waves made the idea of civilization laughable.
He spoke excellent English.
He remembered my bit of sea glass.
He refused to give it back to me.
It was bringing him much luck in his academic pursuits.
He had also never felt healthier in his life.
And he was a heavy smoker and beer drinker.
Since the age of sixteen.
So no -- I couldn't have it back.
Possession is nine tenths of the law, and all that.
Goaded by the lusty smell of bruised kelp,
I yelled "You're nothin' but a big fat stinker!"
And I lunged at him.
For a heavy smoker, he ran pretty fast.
I chased him down the beach for ten minutes.
Then he stumbled and fell, rolling over and over
until a large breaker snatched him up and pulled
him out to sea.
I read later that a Japanese trawler had picked him up but refused to take him back to Holland. He had to go all the way to Yokohama with them.
Serves him right.
That plane ticket to Holland was expensive.
When I got home all my succulents were dead.
They had been overwatered by my sister during my absence.
Plus she had thrown away my collection of sea glass -- the stuff I wasn't carrying with me in Holland, which was only about two pounds worth.
"It attracts corvids" she told me. "You don't want a crow poking your eye out some morning, do you?"
She refused to sell her car to reimburse me.
Does anybody really care about anything?
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