Unextraordinary. That is how she felt. Just another common human being. (Her brain was at that moment linking together billions of neurons in such patterns and connections as to enable a process whereby collection of the senses and retrieving past actions generates a thought). She took a deep breath and sighed (her diaphragm, sitting at the floor of her chest cavity, enlarges, thus creating a vacuum whereby oxygen rushes in through the nose to the nasal passages being filtered by hair-like structures and mucus, is warmed and passes through the pharynx and larynx and into the trachea. It is then carried to the lungs and into smaller and smaller tubes and finally into bronchioles and hundreds of millions of air sacs where it is exchanged for carbon dioxide, which is then forced out through the same path). She stood up (the skeletal muscles contract and pull her legs into vertical while swiveling in the hip joints, being attached by tendons. Her skeletal structure enables her body to maintain shape while balancing on the balls of her feet as the ligaments connect her bones).

She gazed in the mirror (as the pupils adjusted, light passed through the cornea, the aqueous humor, the lens and vitreous humor, projecting onto the retina, sending impulses through the optic nerve which send messages to the brain to be interpreted) and blinked (a tear film flushed over the eyeball, covering it with a natural bacterial disinfectant and drained impurities away through the tear drainage sac).

“I’ll never be anything special. Just a plain, ordinary person,” she thought, as she lay down to sleep (her heart involuntarily beats for the 22 millionth time, forcing a substance called blood through a branching network of vessels of about 60,000 miles. This blood consists of red blood cells to carry oxygen, white blood cells to attack viruses and platelets to prevent bleeding).

She dreams of being extraordinary in some way (ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump…….).

REX ALPHIN of Walters is a farmer, businessman, author, county supervisor and contributing columnist for The Tidewater News. His email address is rexalphin@aol.com.