I was a high school Junior at the
time the Merusi residence suffered an early morning fire in our Central Vermont
village. While the home survived the fire and probably few if any residents
even remember the event these days, it implanted a very clear image which
remains as visible as yesterday in my mind. As a few of us watched from a safe
distance, the outside kitchen door opened and Mr. Merusi - the proprietor of a
retail store which was a town institution - emerged from the smoke-filled
interior carrying in his arms a brand new family-size refrigerator which he
carefully deposited in the back yard. A short and rather portly middle-aged
Italian immigrant, he appeared not even to be breathing hard. An avid
weight-lifter myself I knew I had just witnessed an “impossible” act.
As I was waiting for the inspiration
which led to today’s subject, a news story from Philadelphia hit the wires: a
city police officer named Jesse Hartnett had just been the shooting victim of
an ambusher who had attacked him as he sat in his police car, firing thirteen
9mm rounds at close range, 3 of which had struck the officer’s left arm,
severing an artery in the process. Not only did officer Hartnett, while
bleeding profusely leap from the car immediately in pursuit of the fleeing
attacker, but managed to get off several accurately fired rounds from a
difficult stance and increasing distance which hit home, leading to a quick
apprehension. Quite a feat!
The story brought to mind a
68-year-old memory. My father and I had taken on the project of creating a
small fresh-water pond on our farm property, first bull-dozing a basin, then
building an earthen dam across Ayer’s Brook. The final step was the
construction of a spillway which would permit us to control the flow of
escaping water, thus maintaining stream flow and pond level. It was a warm
summer day as I worked alone, installing cleat boards inside the log-faced
spillway. I was wearing heavy waist-high rubber boots as I drove metal spikes
into the partially submersed log walls. Due to the noise of the rushing water I
never heard the sound of gunfire, although I did hear something fall into the
shallow stream at my feet. When arterial blood, nearly black in color, began to
shoot from my left arm into the water I deduced that my hammer blows against
steel had somehow caused a metal fragment to penetrate the skin and pierce the
large artery which curves around from the top of the hand and up the inside of
the arm. The distance to the farmhouse was at least 700 yards, the first part
up a hill across which a brand-new and tightly strung, triple high barbed wire
fence had recently been erected.
To say that I was motivated falls short of describing my
run. All I know is that clad in hip boots and running uphill I easily cleared
three strands of barbed wire. As I passed our Farmall tractor I grabbed a blue bandana hanging from the seat and,
adding a carpenter’s pencil from a work bench, I had an effective tourniquet in
place and working by the time I hit the rear steps of the house. The eight-mile
hospital run in the family Olds
driven by my older brother was almost an anti-climax. But not the .22 caliber
bullet hole the ER Doc. identified.
Nearly spent, the bullet had apparently bounced back out (the “plop” I
had heard in the water) when it struck the bone. (Reconstructing the entire event which began
with a ten-year-old neighbor boy disobeying an abusive father, we decided to
keep it all a family secret.)
What ties these stories together is
a pair of triangular hormonal glands attached to the top of our kidneys, which
together react to “a cry for help” sent by the human brain. Known as the
adrenal glands they trigger a cascade of wide-ranging physiological and mental
changes that prepare us for action – commonly known as the fight or flight response. What we refer to as adrenalin is actually
the powerful hormone epinephrine which
delivers a state of hyper-arousal in the face of danger and threat, increasing
heart and lung action, suppressing immune function, dilating blood vessels
flowing to muscles while liberating fat and glycogen for increased muscular
action. Blood pressure, muscle tension for added speed, and an increase in the
blood clotting function all act to give a human near-superhuman capabilities.
Somehow, in ways I cannot explain,
the human brain adds to all of this, the ability to compare the threat which is
happening now to a recorded memory
somewhere within the cerebral cortex, of lessons accumulated in the past.
Throughout life, in peace and in war
I have had frequent reminders of the power of this extraordinary human gift.
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