I do not remember what the inside of a squid looks like. I do not remember anything about the structure or functions of its various organ systems. What I do remember is how easy it was, even as a squeamish
11-year-old, to mutilate, desecrate, and even ingest an animal to no real end but pseudo-academic curiosity.

            In 6th grade my Life Science teacher, a brawny brunette named Mrs. Powers, decided that her students would dissect, cook, and eat 14 squid. She brought them to class in a giant Styrofoam cooler, wrapped individually in plastic Food Lion bags. Their flesh was slick, ghost-like against the dark cork of the dissecting trays. Mrs. Powers told us where and how to cut. She took us on a tour of the creatures’ major organs, including the ink pen, which she told us to remove. Sixteen years later, I can still remember the queasy sensation of sliding the ink pen slowly out of an opening in my squid’s abdomen.

            When the dissection was complete, Mrs. Powers removed an electric wok from the cabinet where she kept her purse and coat, plugged it into the outlet under her desk, added vegetable oil, and asked us to approach one by one with our squids, which she sliced and dropped into the sizzling grease. After the pearly flesh had shriveled into a white, rubbery substance, we were each given a toothpick and encouraged to taste.

            This scene took place at a public school in Midlothian, Va., a distant suburb of Richmond bordering on the miles of alternating swamp and farmland of south-central Virginia. In this area, animal rights were not a hot topic, not really even on the radar like abortion, capital punishment, or the failing remains of the Iron Curtain. About half of my friends’ fathers hunted. There seemed to be—and probably still is—an unspoken understanding in this community that animals existed for the benefit of human sport, study, enterprise, and meals.

            The truth is that Mrs. Powers’ squid dissection only floated to the surface of my memory quite recently when, shortly after deciding to pursue a career in healthcare (a decision that will doubtless require far more gruesome excursions into the insides of things than the ink-pen incident), my husband and I moved to Carrboro, N.C. and unknowingly rented an apartment down the street from the Francis Owen Blood Research Laboratory, a facility that has spent the last 50 years creating a colony of hemophilic dogs. These are dogs with one purpose and one purpose only in life: to aid scientists in researching blood disorders. The Frances Owen Blood Research Laboratory was not the sort of neighbor we had hoped for. It was not the sort of place that allowed for ambivalence or denial.