[NOTE: this story was actually inspired by my Psychology textbook. There was an editor's note in the "Split-Brain Patient" section that went something along the lines of, "When reading these reports [about split-brain patients], I always imagine one playing a solitaire game of "Scissors, Paper, Stone" -- right hand versus left hand." I thought it was funny, so I decided to run with it.
Also, I know there are many different names for this game, but you know what I mean. They say write what you're comfortable with, and I think that includes childhood games.]
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Rock. Paper. Scissors. Damn.
Rock. Paper. Scissors. Damn.
It's what I do in my spare time. I sit in the corner and play "Rock, Paper, Scissors" with myself. People who see me try to do it themselves, but they say it is too hard, because they favor one side to the other, and that side always wins. They are amazed at how either of my hands has an equal chance of being victorious, and they will sit for hours watching me battle myself.
Rock. Paper. Scissors. Damn.
When I was six, I was hit in the back of the head by my best friend with a shovel. From then on, I was prone to seizures. For four years, my seizures would come suddenly, frequently, and violently. They took me to a neurosurgeon, who said my only hope was to sever my corpus callosum. A month later, I went under the knife, and I haven't had a seizure since. I am now 19.
Rock. Paper. Scissors. Damn.
My parents suddenly noticed something weird about me. I could be writing a paper, and my parents would ask what I was using to write with. I would look at the thing in my hand, and it would suddenly seem very foreign to me. There would be no name for the strange object in my hand, until I set it down. Then I knew it was a pencil. My father, thinking this was odd, told me to pick up my pencil. It turned into a feat as impossible as diving to the bottom of the Mariana Trench without SCUBA gear. No matter how much I told myself to pick up the pencil, I just couldn't do it. It was when my mother said, "It's okay, you don't have to pick it up," that I could put it out of my mind, and pick up the foreign writing utensil.
Rock. Paper. Scissors. Damn.
That was about the time they sent me to a testing clinic. For my first test, they locked me in a bright, white room. I sat at a desk, facing a large screen. A dot appeared in the middle of it, and I was told to stare at the dot while they flashed a word on the screen. Staring at the dot, they asked me to say what I saw on the screen.
"Art," I said.
They then told me to point at the word I saw. I argued that it would be redundant to be pointing at the word I already said I saw, but I was told to point to it anyway. I pointed, and was asked if I saw the word "HE".
"No," I said. "I saw 'Art'. Where did you get 'He'?"
After much arguing with the testers, I left the testing area. Those idiots had no idea what the hell they were talking about; there was no "HE" up on the screen for me to be pointing at. I went to the room reserved for me. It was similar to the testing area, except there was a bed along with the desk, and no big screen. I sat on the bed and screamed into a pillow. Didn't these idiots know anything? Why would they tell me that I was pointing at a word when I told them I saw another?
Rock. Paper. Scissors. Damn. Damn. Damn.
Later, it was explained to me that the word "HEART" was flashed on the screen, and that I actually saw both parts, but verbally, I saw "ART", and through actions I saw "HE". It made absolutely no sense to me. They explained that, because of my surgery, my right and left brain hemispheres couldn't communicate to each other, and tell me that I was looking at "HEART" rather than "HE" and "ART".
Basically, the testers told me that I was a freak.
It explains the people watching me play this stupid childhood game by myself. It explains why the right hand is able to beat the left hand, and vice versa. It explains why nothing around me is as it seems.
Rock. Paper. Scissors. Damn it.
Rock. Paper. Scissors. Damn it all.
