13 No-Brainer

Chapter 13 NO-BRAINER It took less than two hours on I-85 and I-40 to make it to the eastern edge of Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. Coke whiled away the time listening to music and gazing out the window. Pep wrote postcards to her friends back in California. As the miles rolled by, the freak accident in High Point began to recede from their minds. Dr. McDonald took exit 13A off the Raleigh Beltline toward downtown and made a left on Sunnybrook Road. From there it was a short distance to a parking lot outside a brick building with a sign out front. POE CENTER FOR HEALTH EDUCATION

"Health education?" Coke groaned, taking out his earbuds. "You gotta be kidding me! If you look in the dictionary for the word boring, I bet there's a picture of this place." "Oh, be quiet," Mrs. McDonald told him. "You're going to love this." Construction work was being done in the small parking lot, but finally Dr. McDonald found a spot big enough for the RV. The family had to dodge a backhoe and cherry picker to get to the front door of the Poe Center. "Would you like to see our walk-in brain?" asked the lady behind the front desk. "Certainly," said Mrs. McDonald. "That's why we're here." She pulled out her camera and notepad. "Walk-in brains are cool," Coke admitted. "Way cooler than brains you can't walk in," added Pep. Behind them was an enormous floor-to-ceiling gray human-shaped head that looked like it had poked its way up through the floor from

below. "You can enter behind the ears," said the lady at the front desk. It was almost completely dark inside the big head. Then the brain started talking. "I'm sleeping," a voice said. "I'll be with you in a second." Suddenly two video screens flashed on where the back of the eyes would be. The McDonalds sat on benches and looked around to see sculpted red and blue blood vessels and veins running up and down the walls. They were pulsing, dimming, strobing, and changing colors. The faint sound of a heartbeat could be heard throbbing in the distance.

"Welcome to my brain," boomed a voice coming out of a hidden speaker system. Using 3-D rendered images, the brain explained how it works, grows, learns, and needs to be protected from injury. It was educational, but not in a way that made you want to get out of there as soon as possible. "Some reflexes are voluntary," the brain said, "while other reflexes—" At that moment, a bunch of colored Nerf balls came shooting out of holes in the walls and flying all over the inside of the brain. The McDonald family screamed as one. "—are involuntary." When the short video was over, the lights came up and the McDonalds were directed to exit through the ear on the other side of the head. Mrs. McDonald jotted down some notes for Amazing but True. Signs pointed to a room adjacent to the walk-in brain, where visitors could find TAM, which stands for Transparent Anatomical

Mannequin. TAM is a life-size, slowly rotating statue of a woman, one foot slightly in front of the other and her arms out as if she was taking a bow. Oh, and you could see right through her skin. Half of TAM was muscles and blood, and the other half was bones. You could see her heart behind her ribs. "That face is creepy," Pep said, staring. "Look at the way her eyes bulge out." "My kidneys serve as a natural filter of my blood," TAM said through a video monitor a few feet away. "They remove wastes, which are diverted to my bladder." TAM's kidneys lit up so the twins could see where they were located on her body. Pep touched SMALL INTESTINE on the video screen, and it lit up while TAM talked about her small intestine. In all, TAM explained fifteen of her body parts. After each one, she would smile and wink. "That was cool," Coke said as they left the

Poe Center. Mrs. McDonald allowed herself a secret smile. She had just been paid the ultimate compliment by her teenage son, and she knew that if she reacted in any way, the moment would be ruined. Next to the parking lot was a playground with a giant ear, a sliding board in the shape of a human tongue, and other apparatus involving the human body. Coke and Pep considered