after Nicole Paoli
I.
The average person can bite down with a force of 171 lbs. Human
teeth achieve a rating of 5/10 on the Mohs Scale of Mineral
Hardness, equal to shark’s teeth and stronger than steel. The steel
plating on the hull of the titanic was nearly ¾ of an inch thick.
How many hours a day does the anxiety crash over you like
waves? Insert this number as X and solve for the number of
shipwrecks your teeth have carved onto the inside of your cheek.
II.
A set of healthy lungs can hold 5 liters of oxygen. The average
breath is one tenth of this. They call this the tidal volume [as
though our chests were oceans, filled with waves]. When the body
begins hyperventilating this number is cut in half, and oxygen is
rapidly replaced with CO2. Assuming that you started
hyperventilating three minutes ago, how long have you felt like
you were drowning? and how long until you actually do?
III.
At rest, the human heart beats 60-100 times per minute [steady as a
military drum], but during a heart attack the rhythm can well
exceed this [tachycardia turns the heart’s drum to blast beat]. If a
6ft. wave takes 15 seconds to reach the shore, it is moving at 17.5
mph, and if blood moves through the body at a speed of less than 1
mph, then the chest must be an ocean filled with waves. Blood
could not possibly move so slow. Assuming that it feels as though
the waves of blood crashing in your heart will break through the
levees of your chest, solve for the chance that this is a heart attack.
Solve for how long the phone call with the paramedics will last.
Solve for how long it will take the ambulance to arrive.
IV.
Given that your chest is an ocean, and the waves are moving at
17.5 mph, and that the tides of your breath are now as shallow as a
graveyard of ships, and the ambulance is on the way, and the CO2
is trickling like water into your lungs, and your teeth are gritted
around the hull of your mouth, assume that your vision is
beginning to swim, salt water filling your eyes, assume that you
are slipping under the waves, assume you have never been good at
treading water. Will you still be conscious when the ambulance
arrives?