The Hippo Heckles, Back to the Future Style

“Neanderthals had big noses and were about as tall as I am,” I wrote this afternoon as I perused the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum. (Yes. That’s where I go when I need a break from studying. Don’t laugh). “Maybe I am a direct descendant.”



Thanks to the Smithsonian’s “Meanderthal” application, I can now definitively claim that, despite premature balding, I am one darn good-looking Neanderthal. Who apparently gets beaten often.

As an ancient midget, though, I look much less bruised:



That’s Homo floresiensis, A species that lived from 95,000 to 17,000 years ago on the Asian island of Flores. Their brains were only about 1/3 of the size of a modern-day humans, but they rivaled Homo species of the same time in tool-making and cooking with fire. (See, being short isn’t always a handicap).

To give you a comparison, here is my head compared to the cast (replica) of an adult Homo floresiensis.



Clearly, as you can see, I was excited to be at the museum. I’d ironically forgotten that the Museum of Natural History (in NYC) isn’t quite the same as the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, and I decided, this morning, that I could not rightly claim to be a paleobiology-lover without seeing the Koch Hall of Human Origins.

So I saw it. My favorite part was the cave wall – a wall (in obligatory darkness, like a real cave) featuring covered replicas of famous ancient cave paintings.



This is how ancient artists signed their work. They would use a long, hollow object to blow pigment around their hands, forming the handprint.

If you go there, feel free to be a dork (like me) and measure your hand against the ancients’. I still have a floresiensis hand.



The museum itself also has an Ocean exhibit that features a REAL giant squid (even though it’s dead) found in 2005 and a coelacanth, an ancient fish species thought at one time to be extinct but re-discovered in the late 1930’s.

Combine the evidence of “extinct” creatures being re-found and the bones of the plesiosaur (below), and you have my obligatory freshman-year persuasive paper written for speech, “The Plesiosaur Predicament,” which explains how the Loch Ness Monster is real.



It turns out that a majority of my friends (don’t I know how to pick ‘em?) that I’ve met attending law school seem to be on SSRI’s (happy pills. Antidepressants. Whatever nomenclature you prefer). I think it’s because of the lack of sunlight. I was informed in the middle of Category 1 Hurricane Irene (first an earthquake, then a hurricane) by a 2L (second-year law student) that the sky looks like that all day during the winter.

Like what? Gray? Cloudy? Depressing? Frown. There’s a reason why I didn’t move to England.

Ironically, the law school students rely on the same medication that is often given to prisoners in the mental wards of jails and prisons. The problem is that once the inmates are released, they, on occasion, no longer have access to the medication due to lack of funding for the medication itself or for the doctors who prescribe it. What a tangly issue.

Anyway, sitting in your room all day reading ancient cases (or sometimes recent cases, like Iqbar v. Ashcroft, which are especially infuriating) is probably not beneficial to your health. Typically, it seems as if you could lack some essential Vitamin D.

According to vitaminddeficiencysymptoms.com (reliability?), the first symptom of a deficiency is – you got it – depression! So today, I closed my books with a resounding thud, stepped into my purple flip-flops, and traversed the Metro (yes, despite it being the weekend!) to get to the National Mall.

And boy, was that a good decision.

It appears that once you begin taking pictures of yourself to the left of the National Monument, the fever slips in. Then you need a picture of yourself to the right of the Monument. In front of the Monument. Smiling at the Monument. Surprised by the Monument.



Pinching the Monument.



Symptom of a typical law school student: lacking a life.

But all is good.

To close, I will share with you some frightening things to look out for while journeying through the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History:



T-Rex eating oblivious people.



Getting in a fist-fight with unknown giant prehistoric wombat creature.



Llama? Placed right by frightening wombat creature and classified (correctly) as a “camelid.”



And, of course, the tusk of an ancient hippo(now extinct) that was 25% bigger than the hippopotamuses existing today.

And that’s the way the hippo heckles.

Tweet or Toot?

I’ve always dismissed Twitter, thinking of it less as a site for social skills strengthening and more as a gathering of egomaniacs – you know, those people who truly believe that everyone honestly cares what they have to say 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

(To be honest…I know I don’t.

…Though, I can also admit that no one wants me to detail every single second of my own personal life, either.)

Well, the dismissing stops here. I, the hippo, am here to heckle. Yes, folks, you’ve got it – I’ll give you a chance to mark your calendars – today is the day when I, a future attorney, admit that I was wrong.

Today, there was an earthquake centered in a small town near Richmond, VA that measured a 5.8 on the Richter scale. This number, according to the scale, is classified as a “moderate” earthquake: one that could cause major damage to poorly-constructed buildings.

Well, shit. To a short girl from Florida whose number one fear is of falling, it felt a bit more than moderate.

But, also being from Florida, I had no idea what was happening until a few minutes after it occurred. Had I been on Twitter, I might have been able to see the 40,000 earthquake-related Tweets that were posted 1 minute after the earthquake or less.

There are currently no fatalities or major building damages reported, but, according to the Associated Press, the Washington Monument has a crack near the top of the obelisk and will be closed indefinitely to maintain the safety of the public.

I was in my Legal Research and Writing class (LRW) on the third floor of my law school with a 3L Dean’s Fellow as a teacher. First, the building started to shake, and my classmates and I looked at one another in bewilderment, searching (in vain) for an answer.

“It’s the construction down the street,” some said, but I was a bit skeptical. If construction down the street causes my building to rumble, we’ve got some issues.

Then, the rumbling was joined by a swaying motion. I was on the third floor of a building. A building that was swaying.

“They didn’t train me for this,” the 3L said, half-jokingly, half-scared.
After about 30 seconds, the swaying stopped and we students roamed into the hallway in a subdued sort of panic. The fire alarms began to blare, and outside we filed.

It was one of the scariest moments in my life.

This moment comes in close comparison to having my life threatened by a native Peruvian because he didn’t like white people (direct translated quote). It matched the anxiety that I feel on airplanes. And it was all because I wasn’t in control.

When a man that I barely know roams the outdoor living space mere feet from my lock-less bedroom, I am not in control of the situation. When a plane is 45,000 feet in the air, I can control neither its speed nor its descent.
When the earth moves under my feet (and the sky comes tumbling down)…there is absolutely nothing that I can do.

It was one of the absolute worst moments in my world, and I can only imagine what the Japanese must have felt like nearly six months ago. And I didn’t even feel the helplessness of the unforgiving strength of a tsunami.

*

On a bit of a happier note (and to add some pictures, since I’ve been remiss with the onslaught of my first law school assignments), here are some things that you might find on a typical eight-block walk from 21st and O streets and 20th and H.



You might call this a surveying transit. It measures distance and elevation and allows road surveyors to build safe roads. It also allows Peruvian archaeologists (and probably archaeologists anywhere) to measure appropriately where a dig will take place. (This brought back some memories from a year ago).



You might see a Hello Kitty car.



You might see the makeshift home of someone who does not have one.



Lo and behold, you might find George Washington!



Or, of course, a lone hippopotamus.



And that’s the way the hippo heckles.

Well, lookee here - I'm short!

So, I’ve been back in the District from my Florida respite for about a week now, and I have come to one stunning, stupefying realization.

I am short.



Look at that.

This might seem like an obvious fact to those who know me, since I stand at 4’10. And there are certain times when I become hyper-aware of my height – or lack thereof. For example, if dancing at a club in a circle with friends…I normally tend to be nipple-level with most guys. That’s not comfortable. That’s awkward. Which explains why I rarely go to clubs.

But when not placed in awkward dancing-circle situations, I rarely realize what I lack in height. Maybe it’s because I’m loud, so my voice easily carries to others, even if it has to travel an extra foot to get to the target. Or maybe it’s because my personality is so large that it overruns my little body.

But there are so many big things in this world. And compared to them, I am very, very small.

There is a monument, cleverly named the Washington Monument. And it is very, very tall.


When I look at it from a ways away, my breath catches, my heartstrings pull and I know that I’m in love with my new city. I feel wholly, devotedly, and proudly American.



When I look at it from up close, I feel overwhelmed, intimidated, and yet, strangely protected.



I feel like I am a citizen of a great nation. A crazy nation, where sometimes white supremacists are considered heroes (“The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre” by Charles Lane) and little girls are kidnapped on their way to school to help “solve” a grown man’s sex problem (“A Stolen Life” by Jaycee Dugard). Where Casey Anthonys can be set free because of a lack of evidence and men can (almost) get away with writing a daily blog bashing their exes (www.thepsychoexwife.com).

But these less-than-happy antics are intriguing in their own sort of way, because they indicate that we live in a nation where laws are responses rather than control mechanisms. Where our freedom of speech might just allow us to write a book detailing the atrocities of our kidnapping or detail the perceived (or real) insanities of our exes. Where students study history with a glimmer of disgust and a hope for a brighter future. Where we can do what we want, because we are free. A free people. Free to read, write, sing, and dance however we want to. Free to pray, armor up, and study however we want to. Free to think and love and take a stand for what we honestly believe in.

Life isn’t black and white; it’s full of color. And Americans are a colorful people.


(Thanks to prohibitionsend.com for the picture).

A beautiful, colorful, collective mass of people.

And I am one exceedingly small woman within that crowd of people.



Despite this, it’s nice to remember…everyone in my country has the ability to make a difference. Everyone, no matter race, gender, sex, favorite language, favorite movie, or belief system, can be remembered positively.

In fact, the place that I felt the smallest so far in D.C. was at the Vietnam War memorial. I walked through it at night with some new friends. As the walls of fallen men grew taller, I ran my finger over the etched names, halfway listening to those around me murmuring about the humbling effect of the minimalist design.



(Image from tucsoncitizen.com).

I know I’m short. But, in reality, you know it doesn’t much matter if you’re small or tall. It isn’t your physicality that binds you or defines you; it’s how you choose to live your life. It’s what you’re willing to die for. And I know I’m not the most passionate person out here, or the bravest, or even the most dedicated. But I do know that I’m proud to be an American, and I know plenty of people, big or little, inspire me every day.