Not the big questions, mind you, but so many of the little ones that nag us every day—questions so unusual, so perplexing, so honest that it behooves us to search for answers.
Well, David Feldman in his book titled Imponderables takes us along on his never-ending quest to solve the mysteries of daily life. For instance:
In what direction are our eyes facing when we are asleep, and the natural tendency, known as Bell’s Phenomenon, is for the eyes to roll back above their usual position?
Of course, when we experience rapid eye movement during sleep, our eyes dart back and forth. Probably has something to do with dreaming, when our eyes attempt to focus on moving objects or something that fascinates us.
Have you ever wondered why dogs eat standing up and cats eat sitting down?
Or why do the power lines hum?
Or whether there was ever a real Dr. Pepper?
Some folks can enjoy a perfectly pleasant life without finding an answer to these mysteries.
Unfortunately, I am not one of those people.
Ever since childhood, I have been an avid, voracious reader, especially when it came to the seemingly mind-boggling and baffling questions about some of the most stimulating, yet innocent, questions that plague us through our daily thought processes.
Just about anything that started with the dreaded “Why?” attracted my attention. A brilliant philosophy professor at Marshall University once posed this question on his final exam: “Why?”
One astute senior in the class simply wrote on his exam “Why not?” Of course, he got an “A” on the final.
Being a vigilant kind of person for most of my life, I have always wondered how blind people discriminate between different denominations of paper currency.
Well, Sandra Abrams, supervisor of Independent Living Services for Associated Services of the Blind, points out in one interview that the government defines “legally blind” as possessing 10 percent or less of normal vision.
Legally blind people with partial vision usually have few problems handling paper money.
She said that individuals who are partially sighted may be able to see the numbers on bills, especially in certain lighting conditions. Some people with low vision must hold the money up to their noses in order to see the numbers; some people have been asked by members of the public if they are smelling their money.
Other people with low vision might use different kinds of magnification. Some people with partial sight have pointed out that the numbers on the top corners of bills are larger than those on the bottoms.
Sometimes, blind people must rely on bank tellers or friends to identify the denominations of each bill, and then they develop a system to keep track of which bill is which.
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On another topic, people often ask, “What causes bags under the eyes?” Let us count the ways, in descending order of frequency:
- Heredity. That’s right. It wasn’t that night on the town that makes you look like a raccoon in the morning. It’s all your parents’ and grandparents’ fault. Some people are born with excess fatty tissue and liquid around the eyes.
- Fluid retention. The eyelids are the thinnest and softest skin in the entire body, four times as thin as “average” skin. Fluid tends to pool in thin portions of the skin.
- Aging. The skin of the face, particularly around the eyes, loosens with age. Age is more likely to cause bags than sleepiness or fatigue.
- Too many smiles and frowns. These expressions not only can build crow’s feet but bags. The circles are most probably caused by shadows cast from overhead lighting.
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What do you call that little groove in the center of our upper lips? Sorry, we can’t answer this question, which has been posed by so many comedians on bad cable television shows, we refuse to answer it on principle.
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What purpose do wisdom teeth serve?
They serve a powerful purpose for dentists, who are paid to extract them. Otherwise, wisdom teeth are commonly regarded as being useless to modern man.
However, primitive man ate meats that were so tough they make beef jerky feel like mashed potatoes in comparison. The back of the mouth molars undoubtedly aided our ancestors’ mastication.
Now, through evolution over millions of years, our jawbones have moved backward, making the jaw itself shorter and leaving no room for the “third molars” to come through the gum line.
Most people’s jaws no longer have the capacity to accommodate these four, now superfluous, teeth.
And occasionally, when they are extracted by dentists with bicycle size channel locks, things can go awry because of large, twisted, and crooked roots that refuse to release the molars from the jawbone, you can get what dentists don’t like to mention while you’re in the dental chair—a dry socket.
Saints preserve us.
Proceed at your own risk!
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Top o’ the morning!