On the plane yesterday I was in full “ignore everyone” mode, on my way home from a conference where I had been bombarded by people and noise nonstop for the whole workweek. Headphones in, eyes closed, the flight attendant had to yell at me to listen to the exit row procedure, and you had to poke my arm at one point to call my attention to . . . well, to something important, but I honestly don’t remember what.
When I wasn’t resting, I was playing an indie game on my Nintendo Switch, and in that manner the flight passed (for me) quickly and quietly. It wasn’t until the very end as we were cleaning up our spaces for landing that I noticed you and the tattoo on the inside of your arm. I recognized a chemical structure, which I had only seen on one other person before in my life (theirs was caffeine).
I asked you what it was, and you told me it was serotonin (C₁₀H₁₂N₂O), and that you work in a lab. Of course what that hormone is most commonly known for is happiness and mood, but I did look it up and found that it also has a role in regulating cognition, reward, learning, memory, and other physiological processes, including vomiting and vasoconstriction . . . but I can see why those last two don’t get a lot of press.
I told you that a buddy of mine spends a lot of time in Germany, and he has a tattoo on his arm that is simply a German phrase meaning “the chocolate please,” so that he’s always able to order chocolate anywhere he goes (which honestly is probably the only tattoo I’d ever get).
You mentioned that when the flight first started, you had texted your friend that the guy next to you had a Switch, and you were trying to figure out the game off and on as I played during the trip. I said I would have been happy to explain it to you, since it’s my favorite game, and you replied something like “we could have been talking this whole time!”
We had a fun conversation talking about video games from the NES back in the day, all the way up to modern game systems, but it was necessarily brief because we were almost to the gate.
So here’s the thing: if we had talked during the rest of the flight, I would have gotten the chance to ask a lot more questions about the biology lab you work in. Truth be told, there are some days when I miss being a molecular geneticist (in the very babiest, most junior role you can think of). Sometimes my current public-facing career gets very, very noisy and tiring, and I secretly wish I was back in the lab, alone in the evening with some music playing and the hum of the machines, laptop and notes on the table, quietly going about the business of science.
I’ve been able to touch so many lives and make a measurable positive impact on the world through all the work I’ve done in my field over the years, so I wouldn’t trade where I am today for any possibilities from the past. But still there is a quiet longing in the recesses of my mind that surfaces from time to time, and I’d like to thank you for giving me a few moments to think about the road not traveled.
