This week, I found an old news story about Stjepan Lizacic, who was 56 at the time, who was suing his local health authority because he says he’s become a laughing stock.
Lizacic, a lumberjack, (or since he’s Croatian, a lumberStjack) claimed he started ‘enjoying housework and knitting’ after he was given a female kidney in a transplant operation.
I don’t know about you, but I think our friend Lizacic was fibbing. Why? Because he went on to say that he now finds housework both relaxing and fulfilling. Quick, all you women out there who find housework fulfilling, please clap your hands.
[crickets chirping]
So why did he make this claim and sue? I can think of two reasons:
1) He’s was always interested in knitting and housework, but really didn’t want to say so to his axe-wielding, hard-drinking, male friends.
2) He’s was fifty-six-year-old who makes his living cutting down trees. I’d be looking at an early retirement plan too.
In any case, if all it took was a simple kidney transplant operation to get men to do their share of the housework, you’d have heard about it by now… from the long line-up of female kidney donors standing outside your local hospital.
No, swapping organs with someone would not give you a personality makeover. What does strike me as interesting about this story though, is how routine organ transplants have become. It makes me wonder what we might be able to do to change or improve our bodies in the future. There’s a lot we could borrow from the animal kingdom.
For example, I wonder how long it will take us to learn how to give gills to humans, so that we could breathe underwater. This would be cool — I might actually be able to pick up that coin my swim teacher was forever chucking into the deep end of the pool. To say nothing of what it would do for the Summer Olympics.
Wings would be darned handy, although I’m sure that it would take some getting used to. Not the flying, I mean, but what to do with the wings when you’re not in flight. The fashion industry would have to be completely rejigged. And if you slept beside someone who tossed and turned a lot, you’d risk getting thwacked by both wings and elbows.
Perhaps an exoskeleton would be the next best upgrade. We humans are awfully soft and squishy in our natural states, as anyone who has ever fallen down a flight of stairs can attest. And just think of the body checks you could throw in hockey, or the tackles you could take in football, if you had the same body armour as a … common cockroach.
Personally I think the single greatest improvement we could make would be in the area of childbirth. The kangaroos have it right: none of this morning sickness stuff, no stretch marks, and forget the hours of agonizing labour and delivery. A joey shows up in the pouch when it’s just a few inches long and does all it’s growing *outside* of mother’s body. Okay, so maybe the pouch does get a bit saggy by the time the mini-roo is able to climb out, but it’d be a small price to pay to avoid the stitches.
And I wonder if we’ll ever be advanced enough to be able to adopt animal attitudes? I’m not sure which I’d have installed: cat disdain, so that nothing ever bothered me, or dog enthusiasm, so that I was always in a good mood?
Actually either one would be good, as long as I didn’t also find myself compelled to chase mice, fetch balls, or worst of all, have a sudden passion for housework and knitting.