Reality check time

I have arrived! I officially have influence! I merit threatening! Who knew I was so important? I certainly had no idea I was worthy of being threatened. I should point out right now that I am most assuredly not scared. Any damned fool can send an email from anywhere on the globe. Nothing specific in it made me feel like I was being watched, it was absolutely devoid of detail, and I’ll bet the IP # traces to someplace over a thousand miles away. The guy spelled “kill” “kell” for crying out loud. This is not a guy I’m pissing down my leg about. When I was an undergrad, the Neuro department was the bastard child of biology and psychology, so I have a stronger than normal background in psych. The author of that email is much more amusing than threatening.

Apparently my fan is an opponent of Amendment 2 and he or she is unhappy with it’s passage. This person seems to think I had something to do with that outcome, and maybe I did. I hope so. That’s what I was shooting for.

This untimely threat did lead to one conversation between my husband and I that I have been dreading for months. If I go back to neuro research, specifically using stem cells, we need to move from this perfect eco-friendly small footprint domicile to a secure building and live up high, where drive by shootings don’t happen.

There is something I never in my wildest dreams considered when I went off to college and at 17 years of age declared my undergrad major to be Neurosciences…That some day, two and a half decades hence, we would actually make some headway, and my research could be deemed so threatening to morality that strangers who never met me could feel such hatred that they could take random shots at my house and hope – nay pray fervently - that one of the rounds they unleashed killed me.

But it is something I have to consider. Since passage of Amendment 2 I have been approached by two different research foundations to schedule meetings to determine if mutual interest exists, and to try to convince me to return to my original area of academic pursuit...Biochemistry of the Central Nervous System.

This weekend, when you go outside and rake your leaves, or play with your dog on your front lawn; when you lounge on your front porch with a cup of coffee and some light reading, enjoy that unencumbered time for me too. I don’t regret making any of the choices I have made over the years, and lets be fair – most of that time I was isolated on military bases, and that made me just a wee bit arrogant. Good luck getting anywhere near me there; no matter where I worked (Vulcan Chemical, Boeing Military Aircraft) or who my jobs pissed off (every environmentalist and pacifist in Wichita).

Sometimes I miss being able to do the normal stuff without looking over my shoulder for the lone wacko who thinks I’m the reason we haven’t gotten on with Armageddon yet. But there is research to be done for the benefit of humanity, and I intend to do my part. It is my duty and my obligation. (Plus I feel the need to atone for my stints at Boeing and Vulcan.) The universe would not have given me the sentience to understand what I understand and the analytical mind to devise hypotheses if I was supposed to be a Luddite hermit somewhere.