Do you mind if I talk about Colonoscopies? Show of hands? Anyone?
Let me explain. I had a colonoscopy earlier this year because my mother had colon cancer in her fifties, which in turn elevates the risk of colorectal cancer for my siblings and I. I also get tested regularly for prostate cancer because my dad underwent prostate cancer treatment in his early sixties, which in turn elevates my risk of prostrate cancer.
I’ve always been fascinated by probability and the notion of randomness. One of my childhood family vacations was a trip to a Catskill Mountains resort. The resort offered various activities for kids that provided parents with some child-free alone time. The organizers usually ran out of ideas after a one or two activities, so an activity organizer came up with a ‘horse racing’ game based on the roll of a single die (how does one verbally convey half of a pair of dice in conversation?) with six kids chosen to represent different horses. As a meek and scrawny kid I often was the target of mockery and assorted types of bullying. I was horse number six, and things were looking grim after the first ten or eleven dice rolls. Yet I KNEW the sniggers sent in my direction were based in ignorance- there is no such thing as any type of skill or feats of strength that could influence the outcome. I honed my anger on the utter stupidity of the kids surrounding me- and suddenly there was a proliferation of sixes tumbling along the ‘horse track’. I trotted home as the winner.
I felt strangely vindicated yet conflicted. I didn’t believe in the ability to impact apparently random events, yet did there exist some type of magic realism at play in the universe? My father was a magician in his teens and twenties, touring with a group of entertainers throughout the Catskills and lower New York State. Dad occasionally used his magic skills to enthrall a younger and gullible version of Jack with feats like pulling sacks of ancient coins out from under a tree branch. I didn’t care if it was or wasn’t real- it was a pure act of love and I would bask in it.
My chosen academic field in university was Statistics and Probability. Unlike other models used in Science, where outcomes are fully determined by values of known and predictable parameters, probabilistic models incorporate an element of randomness or chance. Think about that- most fields of ‘Science’ that we know today include the possibility that are things we can’t know. Or don’t know now. Or may never know.
Maybe the outrage of a bullied child, scorned woman, or wronged victim manifests itself in something that can’t yet be measured. Or maybe, just maybe, shit happens. This brings our colonoscopy topic to a close.