On our way back from visiting Matthew’s parents in Indiana yesterday, we got stuck in traffic. And by stuck in traffic, I mean that we went maybe three miles over the course of two hours. A little bit of research with our phones helped us find out that the wreck that was causing the backup had happened about 12 hours before we got stuck and involved three trucks – one carrying mail, one with a load of glass, and one full of milk. No wonder it took so long to clean up.
Anyway – while we were sitting in the car, Matthew getting cranky because he couldn’t read with all of the stop and go motion and me getting cranky because the only thing that sucks about driving a stick shift is stop and go traffic, we turned on the radio.
For all of us who thought that we were having a rough time, All Things Considered was playing a story about Phineas Gage. You may remember Mr. Gage from your college intro to psychology class. He was working on a railroad, trying to pack some explosives into the side of mountain with a metal rod. Unfortunately for him, the explosives were accidentally lit too quickly and the rod went flying through his head.
Ouch, right?
But Mr. Gage lived. Granted, he was a little messed up. Where pre-rod, he was once friendly and efficient, post-rod, he was crude, childlike and left with few career options beyond being a sideshow freak.
Anyway the point of the story is that a collector of daguerreotypes found a photo of a handsome guy with one eye closed holding what the collector thought was a harpoon. Ahoy, a whaler! The collector posted the photo to Flickr, where another Flickr user mentioned that it might be a photo of Mr. Gage.
So now, we know what he (and the rod that went through his skull) looks like. And you know, it’s pretty normal for a guy who had a traumatic brain injury.
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