the same, but different.

Hey, wanna know something kinda cool?

Your lungs are asymmetrical. Yeah, that's right. Those mothas don't match.

So, typically*, your right lung has three, count 'em 3, "lobes". And your left lung has but two. The lower of which, by the way, has an amazing little depression in it, one that your heart fits right snug into: the Cardiac Notch.



...How fucking cool is that? Here is another link, with some technical jargon if that's your thang.

i can't even remember how i stumbled upon this information recently, but i was amazed. Much like i was in the 4th or 5th grade when i learned that we have 206 bones. It seemed like an awful lot to me at the time.

So yeah. Earlier today, Nat and i dusted off our copy of The Anatomy Coloring Book, which we bought at the student store on UC Berkeley campus ages ago. We'd brought it home, eager to learn and color within (or without!) the lines, when a fight began only minutes in to our endeavor. You see, i'd colored a vein and its nearby artery the same color– red. Can you imagine? The nerve of me.
Nat was rankled. The parts were all lettered, he told me, right there in the left margin, and everything was supposed to be a different color so that you could easily distinguish one from the other. Had i even read the instructions before i began marking the page with serpentine carmine strokes? What had i been thinking?

i'm sure i stomped off at this point, and needless to say, the ($26!) book was never opened again. Cue to something like seven years later, and we managed to have quite a lot of fun learning about the Mastication Muscles. We kept everything color-coded, for the most part, but here and there maybe a tooth was blacked out, or a flower added around a skull's eye socket, Día de los Muertos-style. Just to keep it real, you know? And also, fun. Finally.

*Unless you are, say, Catherine O'Hara, who among others has a fairly rare congenital condition known as Situs Inversus. Your organs are mirrored from most others! Hurrah, you're a natural freak-show! Neat. Although sometimes, this condition causes heart disease and/or chronic sinusitis, which of course are not at all neat.