In last week's New Yorker there was an article about cryogenically freezing corpses for resurrection some time in the future when medical technology has progressed; then you could be thawed out, repaired and live another life. I won't be requesting this service in my last will and testament. I love life but as we age, the world around us becomes more and more foreign, like another planet, another world. For most people who die at a "ripe old age" I'm starting to think they aren't leaving anything much they loved behind. My 98 year old mother-in-law, recently deceased, told me that the world and the people she knew and loved are gone, replaced by a strange place inhabited with strangers. As she was in a nursing home, this was absolutely true.
But maybe more interesting than the article on freezing corpses, is a letter to the editor in this week's magazine on the same subject. A former cryogenic researcher writes that he pays $100.00 a year to keep two oyster embryos frozen; he has been maintaining them for 25 years. Somehow he just couldn't pull the plug on them - or let them thaw out and swim away, which he claims they will do. These little frozen guys are getting so much better treatment than the Walrus and the Carpenter doled out to their tiny oyster friends.
If humans can bond to frozen oyster embryos they can bond to anything. When Tom Hanks lost Mr. Wilson, the volleyball, in the film "Castaway", I cried my eyes out. Over a volleyball!! In a movie! Most of this was due to Tom Hank's superlative acting but the human need for companionship and bonding was never better shown than in that film. And Hank's acting was so good, that I (the audience) loved Mr. Wilson just as much as he did.
We're testing a lemon shake product right now; we have to use it on seafood. Are we using oysters? I don't think so.
I loved that volleyball, too. A great movie. I'll volunteer to test the lemon shake.
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