Columnist Susan Snyder: Dissection not a barrel of laughs

Friday, Oct. 4, 2002 | 9:10 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

The advantage of being in advanced English was totally lost on me the day my thumb wound up in a shark's eye socket.

In our high school, English was the barometer for all things academic. If you had advanced language and writing skills, they assumed you were advanced in all subjects.

Regular kids had social studies while you took economics. Regular kids had math-type math and you had the periodic table. Regular kids had biology.

And you got Dr. Guinn, the zoology teacher.

"Doc" Guinn was the only teacher in our high school with a degree that allowed him to carry the titles typically used by college professors.

Saying his name was cool, and he was cool. He had a boa constrictor (named "Otis Boa" after Indiana Gov. Otis Bowen), and we all looked forward to the day every couple of weeks when some poor rat met his fate as a McSnake Happy Meal.

The downside to Guinn's class, however, were the dissections. There were two -- a shark and a mink.

The first semester in Doc's class, my lab partner was Julie Frizzell. Evidently, Doc hadn't received the memo that had followed Julie and I through public school since we became best friends in kindergarten.

After Miss Betty's class, we were never again placed in the same classroom or allowed to be partners in anything -- not even in Brownie Scouts. We managed to get all the way through high school without permanent injury or rap sheets, but our mothers' eyebrows were gray.

Anyway, the day we were to get our sharks, Doc wheeled a big barrel into the classroom. It was filled with some dark, foul-smelling liquid that had a layer of greasy gunk on top. One person from each pair of lab partners was to reach into this murky nightmare and pull out a baby shark.

Julie was four months younger than I, but she was more stubborn. We stood at the end of the line and argued over who was going to place her hand into the barrel of death. Our turn finally came (which meant, of course, that one of us had to reach almost to the bottom to pluck out the last unfortunate creature), and she stood there with arms folded.

"This is half our grade," I reminded her.

Nothing.

So, as I had been doing for 11 years of my life, I gave in and plunged my hand into the barrel. The horrible liquid was above my elbow before my fingers touched something, grabbed hold and pulled it out.

"Eeeeyew! Gross!" Julie shrieked. "Your thumb is in its eye!"

I almost fainted. Julie and I didn't fare so well on that unit. I teamed with Cheryl Warner for the mink semester. Thankfully, the mink came wrapped in plastic. But because Doc had no storage space, we had to keep them in our lockers. Thanks to Cheryl I passed zoology. I hear she is now a veterinarian in Oregon.

An Associated Press story released earlier this week says schools across the nation are allowing students to opt out of dissections and use computer models instead.

It mentioned Boulder City pupil Laurie Wolff, who was in eighth grade when she led an anti-dissection movement in April and won. Clark County students now can learn about animals without cutting them to pieces -- which, I can say without hesitation, ain't no barrel of fun.