Stampede: What do singing computers and pathology have in common?

I sat there looking at that computer screen thinking, "How in the world can this thing be full?" The worst of all nightmares had struck Brock Veterinary Clinic, and during the process of trying to repair the damage, the screen came up with a message telling me that my memory was full. Boy did this complete the already disastrous problem ... .

I sat in the third row watching a herd of 3- and 4-year-old children sing songs under the perfect orchestration of Ms. Young. I couldn't help but admire her infinite patience and gift of gab with little kids. The third song in the second set rushed into my memory banks and flooded my brain with thoughts of being a child and this concept of full memories ... .

I sat in my study chair on the second floor of a rented duplex in Bryan, Texas, in 1987 studying for the last final of my sophomore year of veterinary school. Things were just not clicking. If you have ever gone through one of those marathon study sessions, then you know the feeling. I studied for my seventh comprehensive final in as many days. To make matters worse, the subject was pathology. Man, it was dry.

You might be wondering what computers, singing children and second-year pathology have in common. Let's go back to that night in May 1987, and I'll see if I can put it all together.

Kerri's voice snapped me from a too-much studying daze as she opened the door to the upstairs room.

"Why in the world are you singing that song?" she asked as I returned to a conscious state. "I don't know," I gurgled from my mouth as I pondered the question myself. "You have lost your mind. It is a good thing you are almost through with finals; I think your brain is full," she said as she turned and left the room.

The more I pondered it, the more I thought this jesting phrase that she left me with might be true. I had not thought of that song in years. In fact, it had not entered my mind since I was a little bitty boy. Why in the world did I start singing it in the middle of studying about infarcts? I was beginning to think my brain was full, and it started looking around for something that had not been used in years and was just going to simply put in the recycle bin.

I ran down the steps and told Kerri my theory. She just gave me a look that confirmed her suspicion that I had lost my mind and told me she was going to bed.

Back up the stairs I trod and somehow found room to shove the rest of the infarct story into my brain, which I now concluded had enough room to hold the rest of my second semester pathology.

This sudden ejection of useless memories happened to me several times over the course of veterinary school, but none of the experiences were so vivid as the first. I was convinced that my brain would only hold so much, and it got full that night in May ... .

The third song of the set was "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," and this was the very song that oozed helplessly out of my head that night in Bryan. As I heard 20 kids sing it out loud, I felt all the information about infarcts I had stored in my hard drive trickle out of my brain and bounce across the floor of the gym at the First Baptist Church.

If you ever show up at the Brock Veterinary Clinic with an animal and find me suddenly breaking out in the "Itsy Bitsy Spider," then you can feel sure that your animal has an infarct. It took a little deliberation in my now full brain to determine that the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" is much more fun than pathology.