"Hobbies" By Bruce H. Hinrichs
The body of Mr. Kerpunkle was lying on the concrete floor at the bottom of the narrow, steep basement stairs, having just recently arrived there following a bumpy descent. The parietal area of his cranium exhibited a serious wound. Mr. Kerpunkle was unconscious. His well-worn railroad train engineer hat lay on the floor nearby, as did the unhinged, now somewhat beat-up white door that had once been attached at the top of the stairs.
While not enjoying a perfect marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle had existed for many years in a state of mutual calm and routine. They tolerated each other. Both worked outside the home, Mr. Kerpunkle as a civil engineer, and Mrs. Kerpunkle as a registered nurse. Each night when they arrived home after work they changed clothes, ate dinner together, and then retired to spend the evening with their hobbies. Yes, each had a favorite avocation that allowed a diversion from their dreary marriage and dearth of communication. Hence, every night Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle went to the basement to pursue their respective favorite leisure activities.
Mr. Kerpunkle’s hobby was model trains. He had been an enthusiast since the age of nine, when he watched the endless circles made by a glistening Holiday Classic Express that his father had assembled around their Christmas tree. Mr. Kerpunkle’s hobby had grown in complexity over the years. Today in one room in the basement of the Kerpunkle’s home, Mr. Kerpunkle has erected a large plywood table upon which he mounted an elaborate electric train with all the fixings. His Lionel Union Pacific Flyer Freight set with a shiny black engine and a bright red caboose speeds gracefully around the top of the plywood, which is crowded with tiny model greenery, houses, bridges, little people, and assorted railroad paraphernalia; you know, like those miniature black and white X-shaped railroad signs. Mr. Kerpunkle smiles with pride and satisfaction as he guides his Lionel Pacific Flyer through an elaborate labyrinth of tracks that crisscross and wind elegantly, smoothly, through the dense model landscape that Mr. Kerpunkle has assembled. Time flies by each night as Mr. Kerpunkle watches the train’s movement with boyish fascination, and as he tinkers with minute details of the model set, adjusting this and re-arranging that. As a proud member of the Koochiching County Railroad Association, Mr. Kerpunkle has honed his craft with conviction and love.
Meanwhile, as Mr. Kerpunkle amuses himself in one room of the expansive basement, Mrs. Kerpunkle is in another room, separated from her husband by several fiberboard walls, where she enjoys partaking in her hobby each evening. Mrs. Kerpunkle has a hobby very different from that of her husband. Model railroading, after all, is a common and well accepted hobby, even admired. Mrs. Kerpunkle’s hobby, on the contrary, is wholly unconventional, even extraordinary. It is not a hobby which very many people choose. You see, Mrs. Kerpunkle’s hobby is neurosurgery.
Like her husband, Mrs. Kerpunkle has also constructed a large plywood table in one room of the basement. There is a large drain below the table. Mrs. Kerpunkle has drilled holes in the plywood in order to allow liquids to be cleaned from the surface and run down the floor drain. A sink and hose are nearby. Also, there is a large microscope mounted to the top of the plywood table and a number of surgical instruments are carefully placed on a metal tray that sits atop a small table on wheels. While the Lionel Pacific Flyer with the shiny engine and red caboose is whizzing several rooms away, Mrs. Kerpunkle is enjoying her hobby of neurosurgery in her room in the Kerpunkle basement.
Mrs. Kerpunkle’s interest in neurosurgery began years ago when her uncle, Mr. Mobius Needlebaum, suffered a stroke in his right hemisphere that left him with a strange condition known as alien hand syndrome. One day while riding with her uncle on a bus, Mrs. Kerpunkle noticed Mr. Needlebaum looking intently at his left foot. Her uncle explained to Mrs. Kerpunkle that he felt someone tugging on his pants leg. However, when Mr. Needlebaum checked to see who was pulling at his cuff, he shockingly discovered that it was his own left hand doing the tugging. Well, this struck Mrs. Kerpunkle not only as curious, but also wildly intriguing.
Coincidentally, at about the same time that Mr. Needlebaum developed an alien hand, his sister, Mrs. Kerpunkle’s aunt, fell from a bicycle and damaged the left side of her head. Following her accident she inexplicably began to speak with a distinctive Russian accent, something she had never done before. Mrs. Kerpunkle learned that this was a rare phenomenon known as foreign language syndrome. She found these neurological oddities irresistible and began studying all types of freaky brain syndromes. For instance, she read about Phineas Gage, the man who experienced a metal rod passing through his head, and she enjoyed similar case studies in books by Sacks, Ramachandran, and Damasio.
One winter day, Mrs. Kerpunkle took a spill on an icy patch outside her home and bumped her head on the sidewalk. A trip to the hospital revealed that she had suffered a bruise to her right temporoparietal junction. As a result, Mrs. Kerpunkle temporarily experienced a weird syndrome known as autoscopy – a sense of disembodiment in which she could view herself from a vantage point outside of her body. Occasionally she also experienced heautoscopy, in which she perceived her identical doppelganger next to her imitating her every move, except in mirror image. These vivid phenomenological experiences made Mrs. Kerpunkle even more interested in brain disorders and she took advantage of her stay in the neurological ward of the hospital to observe the patients.
Amongst others, Mrs. Kerpunkle met a man who had been diagnosed with Cotard delusion – the belief that he is dead. “How are you, Mr. Teetertoe,” asked Mrs. Kerpunkle. “Not well, not well at all,” replied Mr. Teetertoe. “I am dead, as you know.” Mrs. Kerpunkle then inquired, “But how are you able to talk to me then, Mr. Teetertoe?” “Surely I don’t know. I am dead, so I shouldn’t be able to talk at all. I simply can’t explain it.”
In another room Mrs. Kerpunkle found a man with Kluver-Bucy Syndrome. The man attempted to have sex with random objects. One day, Mrs. Kerpunkle found him trying to have sex with a bedpan. Mrs. Kerpunkle later learned that his symptoms were due to damage in his frontal lobe and both amygdalae. In addition, Mrs. Kerpunkle found that the man’s hospital roommate was diagnosed with Capgras syndrome and hence thought his friends and family members were imposters, a bit like pod people who had snatched the bodies of the original people.
After returning home from the hospital Mrs. Kerpunkle immediately ordered an elaborate brain model to study. She spent hours going over the model guided by brain maps she found online. Then, seemingly out of the blue, her husband, Mr. Kerpunkle, was diagnosed with restless leg syndrome. That did it. Mrs. Kerpunkle developed an overpowering urge to operate on the brain of Mr. Kerpunkle to uncover the organic etiology of his condition and to perhaps cure him. Hence, she set up her ‘operating table’ in the basement.
The first experiments of Mrs. Kerpunkle’s hobby involved her examination of model brains on her plywood table. She attached a microscope to the table and spent hours simulating surgery on plastic brains. One day, while enjoying her hobby, she noticed a mouse scurrying on the basement floor. She set up a live trap, and soon the mouse was her first living neurosurgery subject. Mrs. Kerpunkle used a set of clamps and wires to construct a crude stereotactic device with which she could make 3-dimensional coordinates. Following the experimental brain surgery the mouse seemed strikingly normal, although it did exhibit an unnatural phobia of cardboard. A stray neighborhood cat was Mrs. Kerpunkle’s second neurosurgery subject. No significant difference was noted after – although, the cat did seem even more aloof than ever. More cats followed. And then some dogs. Mrs. Kerpunkle used ether and alcohol as anesthetics during the neurosurgery, and the animals fared quite well except for one dog who after surgery on his temporal lobe always barked in sets of three ascending whole notes (he sounded a bit like he was singing Frere Jacques or Three Blind Mice). Well, as you can imagine, Mrs. Kerpunkle had herself a very fascinating hobby; and she was becoming nicely proficient at it. Mrs. Kerpunkle felt she was ready for the next step.
Finally the target day arrived, the day for which Mrs. Kerpunkle had carefully planned and prepared. That evening Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle had finished a dinner of goulash and cauliflower and were preparing to adjourn to the basement to partake of their hobbies. Mrs. Kerpunkle was finishing up in the kitchen while Mr. Kerpunkle put on his gray, striped train engineer cap and headed for the basement. His restless leg twitched a bit as he stopped briefly in front of the basement door. Then, Mr. Kerpunkle turned the handle on the white basement door and pushed it inward. Of course, Mr. Kerpunkle was entirely unaware that Mrs. Kerpunkle had removed the pins from the hinges of the door. As he pushed it open, the door came loose from the jamb, and now, as a result, Mr. Kerpunkle’s unconscious body is lying on the concrete basement floor.
Mrs. Kerpunkle heard the clatter. She paused momentarily at the kitchen sink, a determined, fatalistic look on her face. Then she turned and stoically walked to the basement doorway. Looking down she could see Mr. Kerpunkle, his striped train engineer hat, and the white door all lying on the floor below. She had her work cut out for her, she sighed silently to herself.
Mrs. Kerpunkle used a wheeled cart to move Mr. Kerpunkle’s limp body to her hobby room. With great effort she was able to lift the top of his body onto the table and then, while keeping his head and shoulders atop the table, she slid her hands down to Mr. Kerpunkle’s legs and swung them up onto the plywood surface. She made it. Mr. Kerpunkle was still unconscious. She positioned him into place.
Next Mrs. Kerpunkle replaced the white door at the top of the stairs and tidied up the basement floor. She gently placed the train engineer hat near the Lionel Union train set. Finally Mrs. Kerpunkle stood quietly pondering the body of her husband lying upon the plywood operating table. Now, she took a deep breath, it is time to get to work. It is hobby time.
Mrs. Kerpunkle’s first step was cleaning and sterilizing the surgical area and Mr. Kerpunkle’s skull. A razor took off a patch of hair in the appropriate place on his head. Mrs. Kerpunkle adjusted the stereotactic device and the microscope. She moved the wheeled table containing the surgical instruments to within her reach. Then Mrs. Kerpunkle opened a small cabinet and took out a set of wires, a miniature transmitter, and a remote control device that she had placed there earlier.
During her study of neuroscience, Mrs. Kerpunkle had learned about two brain procedures that stuck in her fertile imaginative mind. The first was called BrainGate. Paralyzed people were given a brain implant that allowed them to move objects using only their thoughts. The second procedure was known as deep brain stimulation, a sort of pacemaker for the brain. An electrical signal was sent to the brain through electrodes from a signaling device that was surgically installed below the skin in the patient’s chest. These two practical applications gave Mrs. Kerpunkle a daring idea, and the local RadioShack store provided most of the supplies she needed to accomplish her plan.
The operation went smoothly, though it took several hours. Mr. Kerpunkle remained unconscious, partially aided by ether. A bit of drilling with a hand drill created a small hole in his skull, large enough through which to guide the wires. Mrs. Kerpunkle threaded the electrodes into areas of the basal ganglia using her homemade stereotactic tool, and she then attached the battery pack and transmitter beneath the skin of Mr. Kerpunkle’s torso. Some cleaning and stitching finished the job. A stimulating hobby, indeed.
It has now been six months since the operation. Mr. Kerpunkle is doing very well, very well indeed. His hair has grown back and his restless leg syndrome has noticeably improved. But that is not the most astonishing result of the brain surgery his wife performed on him. Amazingly, the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle is now significantly happier and more satisfying. Mrs. Kerpunkle even noticed that she is using the remote control less and less often as time goes by. And, Mr. Kerpunkle has gained a stunning capacity to direct his body movements with his concentrated thoughts – he is better coordinated than he ever was in his life.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle have given up their previous hobbies. Mrs. Kerpunkle found that she is no longer interested in neurosurgery now that she has reached a sort of pinnacle in that avocation. Mr. Kerpunkle’s interest in model trains has drastically dropped off, concomitant with the daily electrical surges to his limbic system. Most astonishing, however, is that Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle now enjoy a new hobby in unison. They both have become obsessed with salsa dancing.
Each night after dinner, with only a tad of electrical stimulation as motivation, Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle push the living room furniture toward the walls and remove the area rug. They put a CD in the player and dance on the hardwood floor. Mr. Kerpunkle is an excellent dancer. Mrs. Kerpunkle has serendipitously discovered an electrical wavelength frequency that is a perfect fit for the 8-count rhythm of salsa. This new hobby has revitalized their marriage. They find it stunningly pleasant and joyful. The hip movements, arm swaying, and ribcage pulsations seem to soothe their brains even more than does the electrical impulses to the ventral striatum experienced by Mr. Kerpunkle. Although, of course, that helps too.
Things were going wonderfully for Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle with their new hobby. That is, until one unfortunate day when Mrs. Kerpunkle was paging through a magazine at the dentist’s office and she discovered a captivating article about self-trephining. It seems that a man in England had drilled a hole in his own head (using cocaine as an anesthetic) in order to achieve a higher level of consciousness. Although doctors told him not to do that, still he continued the self-trephining and reported that he was much happier afterwards. The man even convinced his wife to have a hole drilled in her head, which he did whilst filming the whole procedure. She said she too was happier with a hole in her head.
According to the article there was a self-trephining movement abounding. Apparently there were now a growing number of people who were trephining themselves in an attempt to reach a greater state of contentment. Mrs. Kerpunkle had no idea there were people engaging in a hobby so strangely similar to her previous interest. Mrs. Kerpunkle was profoundly moved by this magazine article. This, she mused, would require some careful thought and planning.
While not enjoying a perfect marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle had existed for many years in a state of mutual calm and routine. They tolerated each other. Both worked outside the home, Mr. Kerpunkle as a civil engineer, and Mrs. Kerpunkle as a registered nurse. Each night when they arrived home after work they changed clothes, ate dinner together, and then retired to spend the evening with their hobbies. Yes, each had a favorite avocation that allowed a diversion from their dreary marriage and dearth of communication. Hence, every night Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle went to the basement to pursue their respective favorite leisure activities.
Mr. Kerpunkle’s hobby was model trains. He had been an enthusiast since the age of nine, when he watched the endless circles made by a glistening Holiday Classic Express that his father had assembled around their Christmas tree. Mr. Kerpunkle’s hobby had grown in complexity over the years. Today in one room in the basement of the Kerpunkle’s home, Mr. Kerpunkle has erected a large plywood table upon which he mounted an elaborate electric train with all the fixings. His Lionel Union Pacific Flyer Freight set with a shiny black engine and a bright red caboose speeds gracefully around the top of the plywood, which is crowded with tiny model greenery, houses, bridges, little people, and assorted railroad paraphernalia; you know, like those miniature black and white X-shaped railroad signs. Mr. Kerpunkle smiles with pride and satisfaction as he guides his Lionel Pacific Flyer through an elaborate labyrinth of tracks that crisscross and wind elegantly, smoothly, through the dense model landscape that Mr. Kerpunkle has assembled. Time flies by each night as Mr. Kerpunkle watches the train’s movement with boyish fascination, and as he tinkers with minute details of the model set, adjusting this and re-arranging that. As a proud member of the Koochiching County Railroad Association, Mr. Kerpunkle has honed his craft with conviction and love.
Meanwhile, as Mr. Kerpunkle amuses himself in one room of the expansive basement, Mrs. Kerpunkle is in another room, separated from her husband by several fiberboard walls, where she enjoys partaking in her hobby each evening. Mrs. Kerpunkle has a hobby very different from that of her husband. Model railroading, after all, is a common and well accepted hobby, even admired. Mrs. Kerpunkle’s hobby, on the contrary, is wholly unconventional, even extraordinary. It is not a hobby which very many people choose. You see, Mrs. Kerpunkle’s hobby is neurosurgery.
Like her husband, Mrs. Kerpunkle has also constructed a large plywood table in one room of the basement. There is a large drain below the table. Mrs. Kerpunkle has drilled holes in the plywood in order to allow liquids to be cleaned from the surface and run down the floor drain. A sink and hose are nearby. Also, there is a large microscope mounted to the top of the plywood table and a number of surgical instruments are carefully placed on a metal tray that sits atop a small table on wheels. While the Lionel Pacific Flyer with the shiny engine and red caboose is whizzing several rooms away, Mrs. Kerpunkle is enjoying her hobby of neurosurgery in her room in the Kerpunkle basement.
Mrs. Kerpunkle’s interest in neurosurgery began years ago when her uncle, Mr. Mobius Needlebaum, suffered a stroke in his right hemisphere that left him with a strange condition known as alien hand syndrome. One day while riding with her uncle on a bus, Mrs. Kerpunkle noticed Mr. Needlebaum looking intently at his left foot. Her uncle explained to Mrs. Kerpunkle that he felt someone tugging on his pants leg. However, when Mr. Needlebaum checked to see who was pulling at his cuff, he shockingly discovered that it was his own left hand doing the tugging. Well, this struck Mrs. Kerpunkle not only as curious, but also wildly intriguing.
Coincidentally, at about the same time that Mr. Needlebaum developed an alien hand, his sister, Mrs. Kerpunkle’s aunt, fell from a bicycle and damaged the left side of her head. Following her accident she inexplicably began to speak with a distinctive Russian accent, something she had never done before. Mrs. Kerpunkle learned that this was a rare phenomenon known as foreign language syndrome. She found these neurological oddities irresistible and began studying all types of freaky brain syndromes. For instance, she read about Phineas Gage, the man who experienced a metal rod passing through his head, and she enjoyed similar case studies in books by Sacks, Ramachandran, and Damasio.
One winter day, Mrs. Kerpunkle took a spill on an icy patch outside her home and bumped her head on the sidewalk. A trip to the hospital revealed that she had suffered a bruise to her right temporoparietal junction. As a result, Mrs. Kerpunkle temporarily experienced a weird syndrome known as autoscopy – a sense of disembodiment in which she could view herself from a vantage point outside of her body. Occasionally she also experienced heautoscopy, in which she perceived her identical doppelganger next to her imitating her every move, except in mirror image. These vivid phenomenological experiences made Mrs. Kerpunkle even more interested in brain disorders and she took advantage of her stay in the neurological ward of the hospital to observe the patients.
Amongst others, Mrs. Kerpunkle met a man who had been diagnosed with Cotard delusion – the belief that he is dead. “How are you, Mr. Teetertoe,” asked Mrs. Kerpunkle. “Not well, not well at all,” replied Mr. Teetertoe. “I am dead, as you know.” Mrs. Kerpunkle then inquired, “But how are you able to talk to me then, Mr. Teetertoe?” “Surely I don’t know. I am dead, so I shouldn’t be able to talk at all. I simply can’t explain it.”
In another room Mrs. Kerpunkle found a man with Kluver-Bucy Syndrome. The man attempted to have sex with random objects. One day, Mrs. Kerpunkle found him trying to have sex with a bedpan. Mrs. Kerpunkle later learned that his symptoms were due to damage in his frontal lobe and both amygdalae. In addition, Mrs. Kerpunkle found that the man’s hospital roommate was diagnosed with Capgras syndrome and hence thought his friends and family members were imposters, a bit like pod people who had snatched the bodies of the original people.
After returning home from the hospital Mrs. Kerpunkle immediately ordered an elaborate brain model to study. She spent hours going over the model guided by brain maps she found online. Then, seemingly out of the blue, her husband, Mr. Kerpunkle, was diagnosed with restless leg syndrome. That did it. Mrs. Kerpunkle developed an overpowering urge to operate on the brain of Mr. Kerpunkle to uncover the organic etiology of his condition and to perhaps cure him. Hence, she set up her ‘operating table’ in the basement.
The first experiments of Mrs. Kerpunkle’s hobby involved her examination of model brains on her plywood table. She attached a microscope to the table and spent hours simulating surgery on plastic brains. One day, while enjoying her hobby, she noticed a mouse scurrying on the basement floor. She set up a live trap, and soon the mouse was her first living neurosurgery subject. Mrs. Kerpunkle used a set of clamps and wires to construct a crude stereotactic device with which she could make 3-dimensional coordinates. Following the experimental brain surgery the mouse seemed strikingly normal, although it did exhibit an unnatural phobia of cardboard. A stray neighborhood cat was Mrs. Kerpunkle’s second neurosurgery subject. No significant difference was noted after – although, the cat did seem even more aloof than ever. More cats followed. And then some dogs. Mrs. Kerpunkle used ether and alcohol as anesthetics during the neurosurgery, and the animals fared quite well except for one dog who after surgery on his temporal lobe always barked in sets of three ascending whole notes (he sounded a bit like he was singing Frere Jacques or Three Blind Mice). Well, as you can imagine, Mrs. Kerpunkle had herself a very fascinating hobby; and she was becoming nicely proficient at it. Mrs. Kerpunkle felt she was ready for the next step.
Finally the target day arrived, the day for which Mrs. Kerpunkle had carefully planned and prepared. That evening Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle had finished a dinner of goulash and cauliflower and were preparing to adjourn to the basement to partake of their hobbies. Mrs. Kerpunkle was finishing up in the kitchen while Mr. Kerpunkle put on his gray, striped train engineer cap and headed for the basement. His restless leg twitched a bit as he stopped briefly in front of the basement door. Then, Mr. Kerpunkle turned the handle on the white basement door and pushed it inward. Of course, Mr. Kerpunkle was entirely unaware that Mrs. Kerpunkle had removed the pins from the hinges of the door. As he pushed it open, the door came loose from the jamb, and now, as a result, Mr. Kerpunkle’s unconscious body is lying on the concrete basement floor.
Mrs. Kerpunkle heard the clatter. She paused momentarily at the kitchen sink, a determined, fatalistic look on her face. Then she turned and stoically walked to the basement doorway. Looking down she could see Mr. Kerpunkle, his striped train engineer hat, and the white door all lying on the floor below. She had her work cut out for her, she sighed silently to herself.
Mrs. Kerpunkle used a wheeled cart to move Mr. Kerpunkle’s limp body to her hobby room. With great effort she was able to lift the top of his body onto the table and then, while keeping his head and shoulders atop the table, she slid her hands down to Mr. Kerpunkle’s legs and swung them up onto the plywood surface. She made it. Mr. Kerpunkle was still unconscious. She positioned him into place.
Next Mrs. Kerpunkle replaced the white door at the top of the stairs and tidied up the basement floor. She gently placed the train engineer hat near the Lionel Union train set. Finally Mrs. Kerpunkle stood quietly pondering the body of her husband lying upon the plywood operating table. Now, she took a deep breath, it is time to get to work. It is hobby time.
Mrs. Kerpunkle’s first step was cleaning and sterilizing the surgical area and Mr. Kerpunkle’s skull. A razor took off a patch of hair in the appropriate place on his head. Mrs. Kerpunkle adjusted the stereotactic device and the microscope. She moved the wheeled table containing the surgical instruments to within her reach. Then Mrs. Kerpunkle opened a small cabinet and took out a set of wires, a miniature transmitter, and a remote control device that she had placed there earlier.
During her study of neuroscience, Mrs. Kerpunkle had learned about two brain procedures that stuck in her fertile imaginative mind. The first was called BrainGate. Paralyzed people were given a brain implant that allowed them to move objects using only their thoughts. The second procedure was known as deep brain stimulation, a sort of pacemaker for the brain. An electrical signal was sent to the brain through electrodes from a signaling device that was surgically installed below the skin in the patient’s chest. These two practical applications gave Mrs. Kerpunkle a daring idea, and the local RadioShack store provided most of the supplies she needed to accomplish her plan.
The operation went smoothly, though it took several hours. Mr. Kerpunkle remained unconscious, partially aided by ether. A bit of drilling with a hand drill created a small hole in his skull, large enough through which to guide the wires. Mrs. Kerpunkle threaded the electrodes into areas of the basal ganglia using her homemade stereotactic tool, and she then attached the battery pack and transmitter beneath the skin of Mr. Kerpunkle’s torso. Some cleaning and stitching finished the job. A stimulating hobby, indeed.
It has now been six months since the operation. Mr. Kerpunkle is doing very well, very well indeed. His hair has grown back and his restless leg syndrome has noticeably improved. But that is not the most astonishing result of the brain surgery his wife performed on him. Amazingly, the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle is now significantly happier and more satisfying. Mrs. Kerpunkle even noticed that she is using the remote control less and less often as time goes by. And, Mr. Kerpunkle has gained a stunning capacity to direct his body movements with his concentrated thoughts – he is better coordinated than he ever was in his life.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle have given up their previous hobbies. Mrs. Kerpunkle found that she is no longer interested in neurosurgery now that she has reached a sort of pinnacle in that avocation. Mr. Kerpunkle’s interest in model trains has drastically dropped off, concomitant with the daily electrical surges to his limbic system. Most astonishing, however, is that Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle now enjoy a new hobby in unison. They both have become obsessed with salsa dancing.
Each night after dinner, with only a tad of electrical stimulation as motivation, Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle push the living room furniture toward the walls and remove the area rug. They put a CD in the player and dance on the hardwood floor. Mr. Kerpunkle is an excellent dancer. Mrs. Kerpunkle has serendipitously discovered an electrical wavelength frequency that is a perfect fit for the 8-count rhythm of salsa. This new hobby has revitalized their marriage. They find it stunningly pleasant and joyful. The hip movements, arm swaying, and ribcage pulsations seem to soothe their brains even more than does the electrical impulses to the ventral striatum experienced by Mr. Kerpunkle. Although, of course, that helps too.
Things were going wonderfully for Mr. and Mrs. Kerpunkle with their new hobby. That is, until one unfortunate day when Mrs. Kerpunkle was paging through a magazine at the dentist’s office and she discovered a captivating article about self-trephining. It seems that a man in England had drilled a hole in his own head (using cocaine as an anesthetic) in order to achieve a higher level of consciousness. Although doctors told him not to do that, still he continued the self-trephining and reported that he was much happier afterwards. The man even convinced his wife to have a hole drilled in her head, which he did whilst filming the whole procedure. She said she too was happier with a hole in her head.
According to the article there was a self-trephining movement abounding. Apparently there were now a growing number of people who were trephining themselves in an attempt to reach a greater state of contentment. Mrs. Kerpunkle had no idea there were people engaging in a hobby so strangely similar to her previous interest. Mrs. Kerpunkle was profoundly moved by this magazine article. This, she mused, would require some careful thought and planning.
