How far I have come?

As I prepare to move across the country, I’ve been doing some sorting at my mom’s house (read: mostly throwing away things that probably should have been thrown away a long time ago). When I moved out for college, she let me keep a bunch of things there and, although some of it has been culled over the years, there are still some piles. I’m making my way through them, keeping the photos but trashing things that have neither real sentimental value to me nor resale value for others. In my most recent visit, I came upon this:

Lest you feel puzzled, let me clarify. It is a reconstructed mouse skeleton from an owl pellet, posed with a Polly Pocket doll in its mouth climbing the Eiffel Tower, or at least a King-Kong-like-scale replica of that notable monument. I made this in ninth grade biology, learning about skeletal anatomy for the first time. I have only Mr. Bassier, my high school science teacher, to thank encouraging us to not only reconstruct the skeletons, but also pose them creatively. There may have also been a contribution from my already-slightly-off sense of science humor...