Living in a Reptilian Brain: My Lassie Sense

Recently, I've been stuck for topics I care enough to write about. But yesterday, it came to me: me and my Lassie sense. See, I've always had this theory about how my own crazy brain works: I seem to live in that brain stem area, which is sometimes called the reptilian or primitive brain area. You know, the one we share with lizards. I mentioned this to my husband and he looked online for a good description of the characteristics of this part of the brain, and sure enough, it's a pretty good description of me! You can go check it out too and see if you're a lot like this . Go here.

So what does all this have to do with Lassie and who or what is Lassie anyway? You can see her/him (there were many Lassies, all trained by the fabulous Rudd Weatherwax) here. My Lassie sense, which I suppose you could also call pre-cognition, intuition, empathy, etc., has only activated a couple times. The first was when my husband's appendix burst three months before we got married (a simple no would have been sufficient!). The way it works is that something just doesn't feel right when it seems that everything is normal. I don't know what, but it's important. In this particular case, my husband thought he had a stomach ache or something. But my Lassie sense ("aroo?", Lassie would bark, and then cock her head to the side. "What is it, girl? Is Timmy in the well?" would be the people response) told me that we'd better get him to doctor and hospital soon. Turned out to be just in time.

The second time my Lassie sense radar went up, we were driving home from a wedding and my husband had to pull over because he was dizzy. He thought it was an inner ear infection. But I switched seats and drove us home, rather badly because I don't really drive a stick shift, but I did get us there. Every fiber of my being said take him right to the hospital, but he said he'd be all right. This time it turned out that he'd had a massive heart attack. He's fine now, by the way, but he ended up having open heart surgery. That's a story in itself. Next time. I've had a Lassie sense for myself too. About a month after we started dating, we ate at a Chinese restaurant, where I enjoyed some soft shell crab. As we got back to his apartment, I told him he'd better get me home right away because something wasn't right. Sure enough, you guessed it, food poisoning. Felt like a mule in stilettos was using me for target practice, in between bouts in the water closet, where I seemed to always be 50% wrong no matter what end I tried. He said that if I was in space, I'd have been doing spin art. Very funny.

So what is my Lassie sense and how does it work? I really don't know. It's a kind of dumb animal feel or hunch like a finger tapping on your shoulder and pointing to something and you have no idea why. After a couple of times when the hunch seemed to be right, we've learned to pay attention. And my stubborn husband, who I had to drag to the hospital the first time under protest, now knows that if I tell him my Lassie sense is active, he should do what I tell him without question. You have no idea how rare that is for him! Geez!