Lol… I knew it!
I must have seen the strip and started writing moments before Dennis posted.
BTW I know about the mastodon skeleton because my 3rd grade class went to see it.
[And those who don’t care to read my little anecdotes should just skip the rest. :) ]
I’m not sure I remember the name of the museum…
But I can’t forget the size of that creature…
it actually gave me nightmares…. vivid images of it lying down on my bed, crushing me.
It also, though, gave me one of the highlights of my academic career, at the age of 8…. which I only realised years later.
I adored my teacher, Miss McQuaid.
But I was always that kid… the one who asked those questions.
I didn’t mean to. Honestly.
The day after the museum visit, I said that I hadn’t seen any nose bones…. which I’d pictured as a small spine.
Miss McQuaid said she thought elephants and mastodons had no bones in their noses.
She went over to a big book, and looked it up ( I loved that she never just acted authoritarian)
and read us the part that said no mammals had nose bones, not even a giant elephant forebear.
That should have been the end… but… sigh…. not when you have a Susan in your class.
I, meanwhile, had been pinching the “divider” between my nostrils…. which I now know is the septum.
I raised my hand and said I had a bone in MY nose.
Whereupon Miss McQuaid pinched her septum between her thumb and index finger… and declared,, with surprise, that she did too!
I knew more than the scientists!
It was almost the last day of school.
So it was years later I found out that the septum, like an elephant’s trunk, contains cartilage, not bone.
But I’ll always remember Miss McQuaid, standing in front of the whole class, fingers up her nose…
Incorrectly saying I was right!
Lol… I knew it!
I must have seen the strip and started writing moments before Dennis posted.
BTW I know about the mastodon skeleton because my 3rd grade class went to see it.
[And those who don’t care to read my little anecdotes should just skip the rest. :) ]
I’m not sure I remember the name of the museum…
But I can’t forget the size of that creature…
it actually gave me nightmares…. vivid images of it lying down on my bed, crushing me.
It also, though, gave me one of the highlights of my academic career, at the age of 8…. which I only realised years later.
I adored my teacher, Miss McQuaid.
But I was always that kid… the one who asked those questions.
I didn’t mean to. Honestly.
The day after the museum visit, I said that I hadn’t seen any nose bones…. which I’d pictured as a small spine.
So I wanted to know why the scientists thought it had a trunk like an elephant.Miss McQuaid said she thought elephants and mastodons had no bones in their noses.
She went over to a big book, and looked it up ( I loved that she never just acted authoritarian)
and read us the part that said no mammals had nose bones, not even a giant elephant forebear.
That should have been the end… but… sigh…. not when you have a Susan in your class.
I, meanwhile, had been pinching the “divider” between my nostrils…. which I now know is the septum.
I raised my hand and said I had a bone in MY nose.
Whereupon Miss McQuaid pinched her septum between her thumb and index finger… and declared,, with surprise, that she did too!
I knew more than the scientists!
It was almost the last day of school.
So it was years later I found out that the septum, like an elephant’s trunk, contains cartilage, not bone.
But I’ll always remember Miss McQuaid, standing in front of the whole class, fingers up her nose…
Incorrectly saying I was right!