Last week I subbed at school and found myself chatting with one of the young students who had to stay in during recess. We got to talking about what he could expect when he got to high school and had to dissect animals.

“What did you dissect?” he asked.

“Oh, we dissected a fetus pig, a frog, and a worm,” I replied.

“Cool. What was that like? Was it gross?”

“Nah, it wasn’t too bad. The fetus pig was the best. The little heart and organs were amazing.”

“I saw on CSI that pigs are the most like humans organ-wise,” he said.

“Yes, I saw that, too. I wonder if that’s true.”

“Oh, it’s true,” he said confidently. “What about the frog?”

I told him of how we had lab partners and how we worked on the frog for about a week, and how we all named our frogs.

“What did you name your frog?” he asked.

“Hmm. I can’t remember. It might have been ‘Pancho Villa’ or something like that.”

I then told him of how, in the frog I worked on, we found a cricket in its mouth, its stomach, and its intestine.

“Cool!”

“My lab partner didn’t think so. Right about the time I sliced open the stomach and a partially digested cricket leg popped out, she grabbed at her mouth and ran to the bathroom,” I said. “The rest of the class gathered around though, and we found it rather fascinating, the cricket in three digested stages. The frog ate three crickets at just the right time.”

“What about the worm?”

“The worm was anti-climactic.”

“What do you mean?”

“After the pig and the frog, the worm wasn’t very exciting or interesting,” I said, trying to rephrase my statement.

“How do you dissect a worm? I mean, it’s a worm,” he said. “What’s it like?”

I thought for a moment, trying to find the analogy that would make the most sense.

“Dissecting a worm is a bit like cutting open a gummy worm and finding a tic tac.”

He snickered.

But it’s true.