Laboratory Confessions

What I Learned on “Take Your Child to Work” Day

BY LIN WANJEK-YASUTAKE

April 23 was a day of discovery for me because I followed my daddy to work at the National Institutes of Health. Here are the top seven things I learned.

• Magnified or not, the eyeball is just plain creepy.
• Apparently I wasn’t supposed to say, “Oh, you must be that Rachel.”
• The healthy human body contains 10 times as many microbial cells as human cells, and that’s now my argument for not having to take a bath every night.
• The genetic code for the feline is more complicated than C-A-T. Who knew?
• Good bug, bad bug? Why wasn’t this session just called icky bug?
• My daddy doesn't have a lab, but there's something fuzzy growing in his coffee cup.
• All those paintings and cards I gave my daddy, which he said he’d take to work? Well, apparently they were in his “other office, off-campus.” Hmmmm.