To preface, let me say that some people will be offended by this. Others will be horrified. I was horrified, to be honest. I could barely watch. I got up and started folding laundry, but Ben watched intently through the whole first and second videos.

But first, a little background. Ben has been building werewolves lately. In fact, he spent a solid ten hours on Monday (President’s Day) trying to make a werewolf mask with articulating jaws. He ended up with a very complex inside of the jaw built with lollipop sticks, attached to a clothes pin that he could hold in his mouth and bite down on when he wanted the jaw to open.

That was complicated, so he spent more time the next day coming at the problem from another angle – using large rubber bands and a longer lower jaw that his entire jaw could fit into. SUCCESS! The jaws now move when his move. He is very proud of the whole thing. Now he wants to adorn the mask with fake fur from the fabric store.

As he was building, he felt the need for inspirational music, and looked up on Pandora the word Werewolf, which brought up a Rob Zombie song. He put a screen of black paper across the front of the player, because he said he knew I wouldn’t approve of the pictures. They were pretty gory apparently.

All this is to give some understanding as to why in the world I would ever type the following into my Google Search Bar:

Rob Zombie and the Study of the Circulatory System

Surprisingly, it brought up a wealth of strange science links, weird science, mad scientists etc. I chose a link to Bone-Chilling Science and came across one video from the 1940’s of Russian Scientists reanimating a severed dog’s head.

Truly. The. Most. Gruesome. Thing.

And yet, it was presented very scientifically, very calmly, with detailed descriptions, and visuals of the way blood and oxygen circulate, and an explanation of the elaborate series of pumps the scientists had created to simulate what the body would normally do on its own.

Afterward, Ben was thoroughly interested in charting all of this for humans. I can’t say he didn’t want to go off topic and see several other zombie-related videos on YouTube, but for once, I was able to keep us focused.

He colored in the heart and labelled it. We did an outline of my body onto butcher paper so that we can eventually put all of the body systems we are learning about onto a life-sized model. He did my outline, and so my shape is strangely unrecognizable as human, since he didn’t want to get too close. There is now a life-sized blob hanging in the hallway outside my bedroom door. Extremely pleasant.

We have looked at other Heart and Lung videos. We have seen the Circulatory and Respiratory System a couple of times lately, but nothing has triggered a genuine interest in learning more about it until today. I’m afraid we may always have to go the route of Mad Science in order to make things interesting enough for my Werewolf. Sigh.