Flying Topless

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Flying Topless

Are you thinking of leaving your body to science? Well, use your head before making that decision.

As of last week, some “40 to 60 whole and partial heads” (Associated Press) were being held by the Pulaski County coroner after they were denied boarding at Little Rock by Southwest Airlines. Man, don’t you just wonder what conversation was like at the gate!

Maybe there was a problem with the head count. And with 40-60 of them, there was certainly no chance of an employee dead-heading home on that flight.

The heads were not packaged or labeled properly, and a lot of loose and unidentified human heads on an airplane is a situation with which few travelers would be comfortable. It just sort of breaks up the holiday mood.

Let this be a lesson to all of us: when shipping body parts, give the airline a heads-up.

The heads were being shipped by an organization styling itself JLS Consulting LLC of Conway, Arkansas. And one can understand the name. If a fellow is trying to pick up a cute girl – maybe a Southwest Airlines employee – at a bar, “I’m a consultant” is so much more alpha-male than “I’m a guy who cuts heads off corpses with a hacksaw.”

The police became nosy in this matter of boxes of human heads (police are like that), and asked a few questions. JLS Consulting said that the heads were headed to Fort Worth for physicians to use in continuing education. Education. And you had trouble getting your head into algebra. Talk about a skull session!

And as St. Thomas More might have said, “Why, Richard, what does it profit a man to give his soul for the whole world. But for Fort Worth!”

Still, the authorities remain unclear on several issues, such as where the heads came from. Lots of folks happily donate blood; donating one’s head is somewhat more of a commitment and usually not voluntary. And so the heads wait, chillin’ in the Pulaski County morgue, hoping for the message to “Head ‘em up! Move ‘em out!”

All fooling aside, leaving one’s body to science or donating organs for one’s fellow humans is a wonderful gift of life. How good it would be, upon passing, to know that someone still alive would benefit from one’s eyes or heart, or that physicians would learn something new for the betterment of mankind.

But one’s head rattling around in a box in the belly of an airplane – would that help anyone?

Old Bill was clear about our human need to respect the departed, which means a Christian funeral, not a cardboard box and a shipping error:

Do we all holy rites.
Let there be sung “Non nobis” and “Te Deum,”
The dead with charity enclosed in clay…

- Henry V, IV.viii.117-119