Rebecca's Post - 6/23

An Open Letter to Acetate Sheets

Dear Acetate,

I would like to start off by saying that, firstly, I know you were an invaluable medium in the early years of embryology and helped create many models that would preserve early embryological research for years to come and, secondly, you are disgusting. I know one should not speak poorly of one’s elders, and you are quite old, but you really don’t age well.

I just spent two hours of my morning cleaning up oozy, oily chemical sweat from 50 of your slides from the Carnegie Collection. Your job was to preserve those images and instead you nearly destroyed them. Cleaning each one of your slides with Tech-Wipes and Kleenex was a PAIN – in the fingers – and made everything within a three-foot radius smell like vinegar.

I’m sure in your heyday you were glorious to behold, but you should really take better care of yourself. Years in a dark box in the HDAC archives has made you ooze and sweat like a teenager with acne who just ran a marathon or a middle-aged man on an all fast food diet sitting in a steam room.

A few slides in I was berating you in my mind. “I loathe you! You disgust me!” I shouted at you in my head. As I cleaned up more and more of your oily mess (New plan for BP: Throw Tech-Wipes into the Gulf. You’re welcome.), my inner voice took on an Arnold Schwarzeneger accent. “You verbrennst my nose! You are nothing but Dreck!”

You need to understand, Acetate, that the anger just helped me clean you better. In the end, I know we will still be friends because I will always keep coming back to you – at least until the end of July when my internship is over and I will be free from your vinegar-ethanol stench forever.

Yours (until July),

Rebecca