Things I Never Quite Expect

I like being a guide for Discovery Day. Walking around the Anatomy Museum dressed in scrubs was definitely part of the attraction, but I enjoy it for other reasons. Melbourne University opens the anatomy museum up as part of the medical faculty information session, and for that one day, the public are free to wander around. It is, after all, exactly what the name suggests. A museum showcasing the various dissections of the human body. It repulses some, and fascinates some. I suppose I have gotten to an extent of being quite immune to seeing a brain in a jar or something of the like.

Mostly, I like talking to the people I meet. Fresh faced youngsters walking around.. I met all kinds. The hard-core kids who definitely know they want to become doctors the moment they step out of high school. The Year 11s who are trying to figure out what they want to do. Then there are the people who just come in to see the infamous anatomy museum. Fascination at the glimpse of the human body.

Even a totally normal, routine day somehow occasionally manages to turn up the heat. Greg, Shehara, Chris and I were headed over to our last lecture of the day. It was one of those wonderfully sunny days that I would rather be outside at instead of being stuck inside the cramped lecture theatre. People were restless, as was I. In fact, I was very much prepared to fall asleep. Far from it.

Shehara was writing down notes, as she does. I was selectively listening to the lecture, as I do, between reading the news over Chris' shoulder. The chick in front of Shaz was texting, as people sometimes do. I was quite ready to fall asleep, when Greg passed over his lecture notes, breaking my concentration. Chris and I leant over to read what he had written.

It took me about three seconds to realise that Greg was in the perfect position to read the text messages of the chick in front of us. I had to re-read what he wrote twice before I could believe the content, though. It took me that much longer to realise that she was texting sexual messages to her boyfriend. And sexually explicit they were.

To hell with the rest of the lecture.

For the following half hour, we ended up poring over the latest developments of the text messages flying between the two of them. I know it was wrong, but it was so much more entertaining then listening to the lecturer babble on about brain injuries and the like. It was one of those issues that one hears about, but never expects to experience. I felt like a bit of a voyeur, and I'm not sure that the others were unaffected as well.

Somehow, I never quite expected that I would ever read the words, "Oh, you know what I love... You know that I'm not wearing underwear right now."

And that was the mildest of all the message. I suspect her boyfriend might have been nursing a hard-on. As I found out later, he was sitting on the other side of the lecture theater. It was like phone sex in the form of text messages. Surreal. Stuff I would have never expected to experience. Seeing the secret smiles, with the individuals sharing their private sexual fantasies... never imagining that the row behind them was trying very hard not to looked to shocked, and trying to restrain their tongues.

Next time someone texts on their phone, I'm going to wonder.