jump and skip

So far, all of my med school professors have agreed on one thing--that the heart is regulated by the autonomic nervous system. Specifically, that your heart rate and rhythm are not under voluntary control. No questions asked.

Except, that they're wrong.

Or, maybe my dad and I are mutants.

See, there's this thing we can do. We can create a heart arrhythmia just by thinking.

Freaky, huh? Dad tells me that in his later years of medical school, the professors used to use him to demonstrate this particular talent to the first year students. I can imagine them all crowding around this blackhaired boy with their stethoscopes, listening to his heart skip and jump erratically as his face frowned in concentration. He shouldn't have been able to do that.

I don't remember what happened first, for me. It might have been that I asked him, one day, why my heart fluttered sometimes. Maybe I tried it after I heard what he could do. At any rate, as a young kid, the first time I sat and thought about how my heart was beating, and tried to feel the rhythm, and then tried to think it differently...it worked.

But I hated the feeling. I hate the instant moment of bodily panic where your entire system is suddenly and loudly screaming that something is very, very wrong. It twitches me, somehow. I don't know how dad could stand to do it for sustained periods of time. I can't stand it when mine acts up on its own, if I'm stressed or hungry, or afraid. It just feels dangerous.

I do know that I won't be volunteering to the professors anytime soon. I just like to sit back, and listen to them discuss what the heart can and cannot do, and I smile.

Because they're wrong.