I don’t know exactly why I thought of it today, but I remember as a child one of my aunts telling me that every mile we walked added a new artery to our circulatory system. That was quite a revelation to my young mind and something that had a profound impact on me at the time. My brain immediately started developing what if scenarios.
My first concern was what would happen if we walked only, say, a half a mile. Would just part of an artery get built? And what would happen to blood flow? Was the new, partially constructed artery open to traffic? When we walked again the next day, would the body’s highway team know precisely where to pick up again?
Next, I recall wondering what would happen to us over our life spans as we walked hundreds, maybe thousands of miles. The body is finite. There simply would not be room for all those new arteries to be contained inside us. Would we have some kind of arterial explosion?
Ah, the worries of youth. I guess there is no real point to this story except, be careful what you tell children. It might be wise to explain exactly what is meant or how things work lest they fill in the blanks themselves.
1 comment
How interesting! My first thought was, oops, not enough construction projects going on in my body!
Thanks for sharing, Bob. Funny what we hear as children, and what we remember.